Florida tests exposed endangered Caribbean corals to predatory bacteria; over half resisted spread

Representative Image (AI-generated) Coral reefs are often called the rainforests of the sea, but across the Caribbean, many of them are struggling to survive. Along with warming oceans and habitat loss, bacterial diseases have become a growing threat, capable of wiping out large sections of coral in a short time. Now, researchers in Florida have tested an unusual way to fight back, not with antibiotics, but with bacteria that naturally prey on other bacteria.According to a study published in The ISME Journal, about 57% of the endangered Caribbean coral fragments treated with these microscopic predators showed no bleaching beyond the point where the infection was introduced. While the work is still at an early stage, it suggests that using beneficial bacteria could become a more targeted way to protect corals from disease.Can one bacterium stop another?To explore that question, the researchers worked with staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis), one of the Caribbean's most important reef-building corals and a species now listed as critically endangered.In laboratory experiments, healthy coral fragments were deliberately exposed to Vibrio coralliilyticus, a bacterium known to cause dis...