Conclusion (Continued)

Further studies to improve our awareness of coral reef ecosystems could include selecting a coral native to a particular region, and exposing it to different species of zooxanthellae in turn. There is current evidence, as stated earlier, suggesting that after bleaching, corals become recolonised by more resistant zooxanthellae (Kinzie III et al., 2001; McClanahan, 2000). Running experiments on this topic will lead to a better understanding of recolonisation and this will lead to a better insight into the changing diversity and adaptation of zooxanthellae. This could aid in the long term conservation of coral reefs. Also further experiments to gauge the natural ability of corals to acclimatise to increasing temperatures may be useful.

Although susceptibility models already exist, such as that developed by Maina et al. (2007), it would be beneficial to continue designing models to predict the effects of non-steady state processes such as climate change will have on coral reefs in the future (Crabbe, 2007).