Key found to ”moonlight romance”

An international team of Australian and Israeli researchers has
discovered what could be the aphrodisiac for the biggest moonlight sex
event on Earth.

An ancient light-sensitive gene has been isolated by researchers from
the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) that
appears to act as a trigger for the annual mass spawning of corals
across a third of a million square kilometres of Australia Great
Barrier Reef, shortly after a full moon.

The genes, known as a cryptochromes, occur in corals, insects, fish
and mammals – including humans – and are primitive light-sensing
pigment mechanisms which predate the evolution of eyes.

In a new paper published in the international journal Science,
the team, headed by Marie Curie Scholar Dr Oren Levy of CoECRS and the
University of Queensland, reports its discovery that the Cry2 gene,
stimulated by the faint blue light of the full moon, appears to play a
central role in triggering the mass coral spawning event, one of
nature’s wonders.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, who leads the University of Queensland
laboratory in which the genes were discovered, said ”This is the key to
one of the central mysteries of coral reefs. We have always wondered
how corals without eyes can detect moonlight and get the precise hour
of the right couple of days each year to spawn.”

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