Some people (including certain members of my family after they’ve been reading Andrew Bolt) argue that it’s too late to do anything about climate change, and say that life on Earth will just adapt to warmer temperatures. But while some studies have been undertaken to assess the ability of species to adapt to climate change, the results so far aren’t especially conclusive or encouraging.Regarding marine species specifically, John says, ‘Adaptation is also going on, but we [don’t have much] of a handle on that.’ ‘There’s hope that some organisms will be able to evolve at a quick enough pace to keep up with the heating that is happening.’He says there appears to be some evidence of species that have survived better than others during the Great Barrier Reef’s multiple bleaching events, and ‘the ones that do well increase their abundance leading to a change in the structure and the abundance pattern of species within the community’. John, however, is cautious about drawing any concrete conclusions about what this means for adaptation. It’s also apparent that even if some species manage to adapt and thrive in warmer water, this will still spell massive changes to underwater ecosystems. Professor Pandolfi and his team surveying the fossil reefs of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, Western Australia, to compare the effects of climate change in modern and fossil reef communities. | Photo by Marie Kospartov