PhD research reveals coral reefs’ hidden adaptive strength
Newcastle University PhD researcher Dr Liam Lachs discusses research that sheds light on corals’ ability to adapt to a warming world.
18 December 2025
Newcastle University PhD researcher Dr Liam Lachs discusses research that sheds light on corals’ ability to adapt to a warming world.
Published in the journal Science, Liam’s essay is entitled Balancing between evolutionary rescue and extinction: The adaptive potential of reef-building corals in a warming world. It is part of Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists, a global prize aimed at rewarding scientists at an early stage of their careers.
In it, Liam shares evidence that reef-building corals may possess greater adaptive capacity than previously understood. Liam highlights how his doctoral research examined whether natural selection could help corals keep pace with rapidly rising ocean temperatures.
Based on long-term field experiments, lab studies and eco-evolutionary modelling in Palau, his work revealed that to help maintain conditions where corals’ natural adaptive potential can operate, sharp reductions in global emissions are essential and that strategic conservation approaches, such as assisted evolution, could play a role in supporting high value reef sites in healthy conditions into the future.
Liam conducted this research as part of the CORALASSIST and CORALADAPT projects, supported by major UK and international funding bodies. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Queensland’s Marine Spatial Ecology Lab.
Liam’s research focuses on how coral reef management can leverage spatial variations in heat wave exposure and the adaptive potential of corals to support reefs in a warming world.
Read more about Liam’s work:
Coral adaptation unlikely to keep pace with global warming - Coral adaptation to ocean warming and marine heatwaves will likely be overwhelmed without rapid reductions of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to an international team of scientists.
Pacific coral reef shows historic increase in climate resistance - Coral reefs in one part of the Pacific Ocean have likely adjusted to higher ocean temperatures which could reduce future bleaching impacts of climate change, new research reveals.
Comment: Pacific coral reef climate resistance - Writing for The Conversation, Liam Lachs discusses a new study which shows that a remote Pacific coral reef shows at least some ability to cope with ocean warming.
Comment: Coral breeding - Writing for The Conversation, Liam Lachs, Dr Adriana Humanes and Dr James Guest discuss how they bred corals to better tolerate heatwaves and call for rapid climate action to save reefs.
Comment: Coral adaptation - Writing for the Conversation, Drs Liam Lachs, Adriana Humanes, James Guest and Prof Peter Mumby discuss that corals can adapt to warming oceans, but not fast enough.
Reference:
Liam Lachs, Balancing between evolutionary rescue and extinction: The adaptive potential of reef-building corals in a warming world.Science390,686-686(2025).DOI:10.1126/science.aec9600