Japanese scientists from the University of Tokyo have revealed the mystery of coral reproduction, which has puzzled biologists for many years. The research was published in the scientific journal magazine Royal Society Open Science (RSOS).
Corals are colonies of small anemone. Like other animals, they produce offspring by fertilizing eggs with sperm. However, since this is a rare and unpredictable situation, the process is not fully understood.
“Despite decades of research, the environmental factors behind synchronous spawning remain unclear. Data on coral spawning are very sparse. There were not enough of them to model this process. But we found a way to conduct an experiment,” said Associate Professor Shinichiro Maruyama, one of the authors of the scientific study.
The team consulted data from the Churaumi Aquarium on the southern island of Okinawa, where staff have been recording the spawning of Acropora corals for 15 years.
Scientists analyzed the data and found that corals can choose the ideal time to reproduce by taking into account many environmental factors such as water temperature, precipitation and solar radiation.
Experts fed the collected information into the model and obtained a program to predict the future reproduction of corals in the wild.
Previous scientists I overheard “Singing” and other sounds of coral reefs at different times of the day.