Spawning for a Better Life.

The article reports that scientists around the world are racing to comprehend coral reproduction, as the Earth's besieged corals become the focus of the International Year of the Reef in 2008. The consortium, Sexual Coral Reproduction (SECORE), hopes that by growing the corals in aquaria, they would prevent beleaguered species from extinction. Some studies are paying off. One team, by combining spawning records and satellite climate data, has started to overturn the view that surface water temperatures control the spawning cycle. DNA studies have also unearthed proteins that detect the light and fine-tune the spawning clock.