Professor Olivier Thomas

Yeah, so that's interesting.

Mainly we're working on warm coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean, but also the Caribbean.

But it's true that there's also cold coral reefs actually in the territory of Ireland, in the deep ocean.

So we worked also on that, but mainly the activities on the warm coral reefs indeed, in the Pacific especially.

Yeah, so indeed there are hotspots of diversity, these warm coral reefs.

So that's now 10 years we've built a big consortium with people in France, with the Tara people in France, but not only, Switzerland, Germany, America and Australia, where we really use expedition, develop expeditions in the Pacific to really study

the diversity actually present in the coral reefs in the Pacific.

So you are right to mention these different types of diversity.

So we mean genetic diversity indeed.

That's what we studied in this particular article, but also biodiversity in terms of species, which is certainly very, very important.

As you said, these coral reefs, they host a lot of marine life, all types of marine life coming from the fishes, of course, but not only.

So this is all types of diversity, I would say, but involving, of course, the communities as well, because they live from these coral reefs and all the resources they provide.

Yeah, so that's very important to make a difference between the coral reef and the coral species indeed, okay?

So the animal coral is indeed an animal, right?

So the reef is all the resources, the marine life that inhabits this reef, right?

But they're building corals.

So that means that they are building an entire ecosystem over kilometres of underwater life.

life, I would say.

And then this is an animal living in close relationship with the zooxanthellae, so that's already a close association.

And this allows actually other animals to live and thrive in this actually quite poor, in terms of nutrients, ocean.