“Professor Peter Mumby and Dr Laith Yakob from the University of Queensland report on their findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that small short lived corals which are taking over from large corals in some parts of the world are more resistant to disease.”

The authors warn that this finding, while seeming like a positive thing, actually has negative implications for the life coral reefs support.  Smaller corals mean less complexity, meaning less fish and associated invertebrates.

via Smaller corals take the heat › News in Science (ABC Science).