Nearly half of reef-building corals face elevated relative risk of extinction.

Authors

David O Obura, Beth Polidoro, Francoise Cabada-Blanco, Christi Linardich, Nick Carpenter, Luis Gutierrez, Krista Kemppinen, Emma Pettersson, Kyle Strongin, Greta Aeby, Khatija Alliji, Juan Jose Alvarado, Lorenzo Alvarez-Filip, Pilar Casado de Amezua, Anastazia Banaszak, Daniel T I Bayley, Joanna K Bluemel, Jorge Cortés, Elena Couce, Benjamin Cowburn, M James C Crabbe, Aldo Croquer, Walter Dellisanti, Lyndon DeVantier, Alasdair Edwards, Joshua Feingold, Hagen M Gegner, Elizabeth Goergen, Stefano Goffredo, Bert W Hoeksema, Danwei Huang, Jack Johnson, Emma Kennedy, Diego K Kersting, Sun W Kim, Marcelo Visentini Kitahara, Petar Kružić, Claire J Lewis, Wilfredo Y Licuanan, Katrina S Luzon, Margaret W Miller, Anthony D Montgomery, Joanna Murray, Chin Soon Lionel Ng, Flavia Nunes, C Isabel Nuñez-Lendo, Paul Pearce-Kelly, Sean N Porter, Juan Pablo Quimbayo, Pedro Range, Zoe Richards, Andrea Rivera-Sosa, Ronan Roche, Rosa E Rodríguez-Martínez, Gregorio de la Rosa, Kathryn Rosell, Kaveh Samimi-Namin, Nadia Santodomingo, Tom Shlesinger, Michael Sweet, Emre Turak, Ruben van Hooidonk, Mark Vermeij, Estrella Villamizar, Zarinah Waheed, Bryan Wilson

Published in

Nature. Oct 15, 2026. Epub Oct 15, 2026.

Abstract

Coral reefs are diverse marine ecosystems that provide ecological functions and economic and social benefits across over 100 tropical countries. Warming driven by climate change is a primary threat to coral reefs and is increasing the frequency of global coral bleaching events. Here we reassessed the IUCN Red List status of 892 reef-building coral species, first assessed in 2008 ¹. Because species-level population trends are unavailable for most reef-building corals, population reductions were inferred using proxies based on global coral cover trends and projected annual severe bleaching under SSP2-4.5, both over three decades, adjusted using trait-based estimates of species vulnerability. Of the 774 species with sufficient data to be assessed, 340 (44%) were classified as threatened under IUCN Red List criteria. Thirty-three species were assessed as Critically Endangered, 251 as Endangered, and 56 as Vulnerable, most due to risk of population reduction associated with projected thermal stress. These findings predate the three hottest years on record and the fourth global coral bleaching event (2023-2025), and the first exceedance for an annual mean of the 1.5^oC global warming threshold. The findings reinforce the importance of limiting further warming to maintain coral biodiversity and reef ecosystem function. The Red List assesses the relative extinction risk of species, whereby species are placed in categories of increasing risk by comparing their population size, decline and geographic range against standardised thresholds. The Red List does not predict whether or when a species may go extinct. As the ranges of coral species remain under-surveyed, future assessments would be strengthened by species-level population data and thermal-stress and recovery metrics that better capture range-representative dynamics.

PMID:
42880730
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 16 Oct 2026.

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