Inside a dim laboratory at Oregon State University, a glass tank full of living corals glows like a slice of sky during the grand finale of a fireworks display. These species would never share the same stretch of ocean in real life, but they have one important thing in common.
“All of these corals are symbiotic,” says Virginia Weis, who chairs the Department of Integrative Biology, peering into the tank with me. “Every single one of them has algae, and without that interaction they would bleach and die.”
The corals eat but don’t digest these single-celled photosynthetic algae, which then reside inside the corals and feed them the carbon sugars created during photosynthesis. In return, the corals not only give the algae a safe berth but also feed the algae nutrients.
A crescendo of evidence points to the central role of microorganisms — bacteria, viruses, fungi and algae — in ...
