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SOME of the world’s coral reefs may be able to adapt to global warming – up to a point.

Reefs get their vivid colours from algal cells that live inside, and feed, the coral polyp. If the water gets too warm the algae flee, leaving the coral white and, eventually, dead. Warmer seas have led to severe bleaching and die-offs on some reefs.

Now biologists at Australia’s Cooperative Research Centre for the Great Barrier Reef in Townsville, Queensland, have shown that some algae can adapt. Corals from warmer reefs harbour a strain of algae called type D and resist bleaching. Corals from cooler reefs have a slightly different strain, called type C, which can’t take the heat.