Some populations of Caribbean staghorn are not as wimpy as previously thought

Arecent paperpublished in the journal of the Public Library of Science reports on a study which used genetic tools to look for disease resistance in the threatened staghorn coral,Acropora cervicornis. Researchers Steven Volmer and David Kline performed infection trials of White Band Disease (WBD) on staghorn coral and investigated their genetic makeup to identify any markers which could explain an innate disease resitance. In the experiments, severalgenotypes ofA. cervicorniswere resistant to WBD despite repeated attempts to infect them. These disease-resistant corals showed similarities in their DNA which support the notion that some coral populations are genetically tougher than others. We’ve all had some corals that seemed impervious to anything we could throw at them and now science agrees. We’re lookin’ at you Green Slimer.