The Value of Coralligenous Habitats

What do we know about nature? Not a whole lot. According to estimates from the French National Museum of Natural History, we have identified between 1% and 10% of the species on Earth. Marine ecosystems have been greatly damaged from being exploited for our wants and needs, though we still know very little about them and the role they play. Whether it is for biology or economics, we should be diving deep into how these habitats are important on both a large and small scale. This is what Laure Thierry de Ville d’Avray, Dominique Ami, Anne Chenuil, Romain David, and Jean-Pierre Féral have demonstrated by studying a little-known Mediterranean habitat known as ‘coralligene.’