Sarah Davies était venue à Moorea en 2013, dans le cadre des bourses IRCP et avait réalisé des analyses génétiques sur les coraux (plus de détail ici).

En juin 2015, 6 auteurs, dont Sarah, publient dans Science :

Genomic determinants of coral heat tolerance across latitudes (lien vers Sciencemag.org)

Abstract: As global warming continues, reef-building corals could avoid local population declines through “genetic rescue” involving exchange of heat-tolerant genotypes across latitudes, but only if latitudinal variation in thermal tolerance is heritable. Here, we show an up–to–10-fold increase in odds of survival of coral larvae under heat stress when their parents come from a warmer lower-latitude location. Elevated thermal tolerance was associated with heritable differences in expression of oxidative, extracellular, transport, and mitochondrial functions that indicated a lack of prior stress. Moreover, two genomic regions strongly responded to selection for thermal tolerance in interlatitudinal crosses. These results demonstrate that variation in coral thermal tolerance across latitudes has a strong genetic basis and could serve as raw material for natural selection.