Coral reefs are biodiverse ecosystems that provide food, income, coastal protection, and many other services to millions of people. Yet coral reefs are under threat from human impacts such as climate change—many corals cannot tolerate the warming ocean water and have suffered massive 'bleaching' events, which can be fatal. Researchers have discovered that some corals have the capacity to acclimatize to warmer water, while other corals do not. The researchers fear that because corals are long-lived colonial animals and thus evolve slowly, they may not be able to adapt to global warming fast enough to avoid extinction. Explain how the difference between acclimatize and adapt is important to the fate of corals.

Video transcript

Hello everyone here. We have a question telling us tomatoes stripe best and temperate climates but can survive freezing temperatures provided that the temperature change happens over a few days and is not sudden. This is an example of a adaptation be acclimatization, see resistance or despair speciation. This is an example of acclimatization. This is the temporary adjustment to a stimulus. It has to develop over a period. It can't happen suddenly, just like in the tomatoes. It has to happen over at least a few days and they adapt through chilling ACL atomization. This is the process by which plants acquire freezing tolerance through exposure to sub optimal low non freezing temperatures. So our answer here is B acclimatization. Thank you for watching. Bye!