How coral reefs can survive climate change
Global microbial biodiversity is much higher than previously thought. The impacts of the environment on evolutionary adaptation are species-specific. And: Important genes in corals are duplicated.
These are the initial results of the Tara Pacific Expedition researching the conditions for life and survival of corals. The ship travelled across the entire Pacific Ocean, assembling the largest genetic inventory conducted in any marine system to date. The team's 70 scientists from eight countries – among them Christian Voolstra, professor of genetics of adaptation in aquatic systems at the University of Konstanz – took around 58,000 samples from the hundred coral reefs studied.
The largest-ever data set collection on coral reef ecosystems is freely available and, for years to come, will be the basis for investigating the living conditions for corals and finding a way for them to survive climate change.
An overview of all Tara Pacific data sets is available on zenodo. All data sets are freely available for download there.
An open access article on the physicochemical environmental data from the Tara Pacific Expedition (doi: 10.1038/s41597-022-01757-w) is freely available from the journal Scientific Data.
Genomic sequencing data from the Tara Pacific Expedition is freely available for download from the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA).
An open access article about the genomic data and protocols from the Tara Pacific Expedition published in Scientific Data (doi: 10.1038/s41597-023-02204-0) is freely available for download from the Konstanz Online Publication System (KOPS).
A collection of reports and logs from the Tara Pacific Expedition is available in the PANGEA open access library.