The study was carried out by Professor Mike Kingsford of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University and colleague Dr Andrew Brierley of St Andrews University, Scotland.
This gene-mapping project has both practical and scientific significance," said professor David Miller of Australia's Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.
Scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, working with the Indonesian government and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said their examination of 60 sites on 497 miles of coastline along Indonesia's Aceh province showed the reefs were bouncing back.
We have found clear evidence that coral recruitment - the regrowth of young corals - drops sharply in the wake of a major bleaching event or a hurricane," said lead study author Dr Jennie Mallela of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and Australian National University.
Scientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University and the University of Queensland are compiling the world's first detailed gene expression library for Symbiodinium.
The WCS team, working in conjunction with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (ARCCoERS) along with government, community and non-government partners, has documented high densities of "baby corals" in areas that were severely impacted by the tsunami.
That's the message from Professor Malcolm McCulloch of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies to a recent conference of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in Cairns.
Research conducted by William Robbins and colleagues at James Cook University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, found that grey reef shark numbers had already &dined to around 3% of unfished levels, and are currently declining so fast that they could collapse to one-thousandth of their unfished levels within 20 years if current conditions continue.