Purple fringe means healthy coral

Caroline Morley, online picture researcher

(Image: University of Southampton)

That's not a tasteful colour scheme for a knit - it's a healthy colour for a coral. Reef-building corals produce vivid colours as they grow, offering a new tool for monitoring these fragile environments.

This photograph, taken in daylight, shows a Montipora foliosa coral with purple in its growing fringes. The colour comes from chromoproteins similar to the green fluorescent protein (GFP) found in bioluminescent jellyfish.

Researchers from the University of Southampton, UK,and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, found that the GFP-like proteins were produced by corals in the growing extremities of healthy colonies.

They also found that, in comparison with undisturbed areas, disturbed colonies also produce chromoproteins: the disturbed corals accelerate growth as part of their immune response to foreign biological material, perhaps in an effort to outgrow competitors or disease. For example, Red Sea Acropora coral produces a blue protein as it grows in response to mechanical damage; red fluorescence increases in growth margins in the presence of gastropods and tube worms.

The team hope that the GFP-like proteins could be used to spot vulnerable corals. They also warned that a knock-on effect of climate change, which is predicted to slow the growth of corals, could be to affect their immune response.

Journal reference: Coral Reefs, DOI: 10.1007/s00338-012-0926-8

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