Advances in Coral Biology

Understanding coral biology is crucial for coral reef management under the crisis of global change. This chapter provides updated knowledge on several important aspects of coral biology and existential threats to the sustainable growth of coral reefs from basic biology, including reproduction, development, and recruitment on the hard bottom to the current existential threats of coral reefs due to the prevalence of their bleaching and diseases. Advances in our knowledge on coral sexual reproduction, fertilization, hybridization, development, and recruitment are briefly reviewed. The diversity of reef-building coral species has been recently enriched with the application of molecular and population genetic investigation, and its outcome was also reviewed here. Partly due to the abrupt climate change and the increased human waste input into the coral reef region greatly increased the rate of mortality of corals arisen from the loss of their symbiont zooxanthellae to lead their bleaching or rampant disease to kill coral animals. The causes and their extents in the Indo-Pacific Oceanic region were summarized, and several case studies for prevention of coral bleaching and amelioration and cure of coral diseases were also included here.