With much of the world’s coral turning a ghostly white, UC Riverside scientists have launched a $1.1 million project to uncover how reefs regain life-giving algae after suffering from heat stress and boost natural coral reef resilience.

Bleaching occurs when stressed corals lose the algae living in their tissues. Without them, coral turns pale and begins to starve. If algae don’t return within a few weeks, the sickly coral dies, leaving behind a white skeleton that can no longer support the marine life that once depended on it.

“Many corals depend on their algal partners for survival, but we still know very little about how these relationships recover once disrupted,” said project leader and UCR assistant bioengineering professor Tingting Xiang, regarding boosting natural coral reef resilience.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the three-year project will use advanced imaging and living experimental systems to learn what’s happening on a cellular level when algae return to bleached reefs. The researchers will use that understanding to drive future restoration strategies that boost this natural process.

One method they will use to study the process involves a type of sea anemone that will act as a stand-in for corals. They’ll stress the anemone, then watch in real-time with high-powered microscopes as colored algae return to the anemone host.

The team will also use computational modeling, developed in collaboration with UCR assistant math professor Jia Gou, to simulate the algae’s growth once it has returned to a coral host and boost natural coral reef resilience.

“I’m excited to contribute to this project by building computational models that show how algae populations grow inside coral and how that might shape their recovery over time,” Gou said.

Beyond imaging and modeling, the team will also identify the genes and cellular pathways that regulate algae reestablishment. Together, these complementary approaches will shed new light on how coral–algal partnerships rebuild themselves after stress.

Read the full article about boosting natural coral reef resilience by Jules Bernstein at UC Riverside News.