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

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 1.5oC 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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CORDIO East Africa, Mombasa, Kenya

    David O. Obura

  2. Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Solomons, MD, USA

  3. Institute of Marine Science, School of the Environment and Life Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Southsea, UK

  4. IUCN Marine Biodiversity Unit, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, USA

  5. School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

  6. IUCN SSC Coral Specialist Group, Gland, Switzerland

  7. College of Science and Mathematics, Tarleton State University, Stephenville, Texas, USA

  9. Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (Cefas), Weymouth, UK

    Khatija Alliji, Joanna K. Bluemel, Elena Couce & Benjamin Cowburn

  10. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología (CIMAR), Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica

    Juan Jose Alvarado & Jorge Cortés

  11. Unidad Académica de Sistemas Arrecifales, Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, México

    Lorenzo Alvarez-Filip, Anastazia Banaszak & Rosa E. Rodríguez-Martínez

  12. MedCoral Program, HyT Association, Tomares, Sevilla, Spain

  13. Fauna & Flora, Cambridge, UK

    Daniel T. I. Bayley

  14. Wolfson College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    M. James C. Crabbe

  15. The Nature Conservancy, Caribbean Division, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

  16. Marine Biology Section, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

  17. Coral Reef Research Inc., <City>, Queensland, Australia

    Lyndon DeVantier & Emre Turak

  18. Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, Nova Southeastern University, Dania Beach, Florida, USA

  19. Centre for Organismal Studies (COS), Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Hagen M. Gegner

  20. Reefscape Restoration Initiative, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

  21. Marine Science Group, Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

  22. Fano Marine Center, The Inter-Institute Center for Research on Marine Biodiversity, Resources and Biotechnologies, Fano, Italy

  23. Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Bert W. Hoeksema

  24. Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

  25. School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

  26. Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), Townsville, Queensland, Australia

  27. Instituto de Acuicultura Torre de la Sal, CSIC, Castellón de la Plana, Castellón, Spain

    Diego K. Kersting

  28. School of the Environment, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Sun W. Kim

  29. Center for Marine Biology, University of São Paulo, São Sebastião, São Paulo, Brazil

  30. Laboratory for Marine Biology, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science (PMF), University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

  31. Hawai&#x02BB;i Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, <City>, Hawai‘i, USA

    Claire J. Lewis

  32. Br. Alfred Shields FSC Ocean Research Center and Department of Biology, De La Salle University, Manila, The Philippines

    Wilfredo Y. Licuanan & Katrina S. Luzon

  33. The Marine Science Institute, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, The Philippines

    Katrina S. Luzon

  34. SECORE International, Miami, Florida, USA

    Margaret W. Miller

  35. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, USA

    Anthony D. Montgomery

  36. Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (Cefas), Lowestoft, UK

  37. Tropical Marine Science Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

  38. Climate Change Cluster, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, New South Wales, Australia

    C. Isabel Nuñez-Lendo

  39. Zoological Society of London, Regent’s Park, London, UK

  40. Oceanographic Research Institute, South African Association for Marine Biological Research, Durban, South Africa

    Sean N. Porter

  41. School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

    Sean N. Porter

  42. BioScales Lab, Department of Biology, University of Miami, Miami, USA

  43. Environmental Science Center, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

  44. Collections and Research, Western Australian Museum, Perth, Australia

  45. The Coral Reef Alliance, San Francisco, California, USA

  46. Laboratorio de Corales Pétreos y Arrecifes Coralinos, Departamento de Sistemática y Ecología Acuática, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur Unidad Chetumal, <City>, Quintana Roo, México

  47. School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University, Anglesey, Wales, UK

  48. Independent researcher, Manila, Philippines

    Gregorio de la Rosa

  49. Biology Department, Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, The Philippines

  50. Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

  51. Natural History Museum, London, UK

    Kaveh Samimi-Namin & Nadia Santodomingo

  52. Department of Marine Zoology, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Frankfurt, Germany

  53. School of Zoology, The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

  54. Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Tom Shlesinger & Ruben van Hooidonk

  55. Aquatic Research Facility, Nature-based Solutions Research Centre, University of Derby, Derby, UK

  56. Science for Climate Change Resilience, Carolina Beach, North Carolina, USA

  57. CARMABI Foundation, Piscaderabaai z/n, Willemstad, Curacao, Netherlands

  58. Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela

  59. Borneo Marine Research Institute, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, <City>, Malaysia

  60. John Krebs Field Station, Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Wytham, UK

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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to David O. Obura, Beth Polidoro or Francoise Cabada-Blanco.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information (download PDF )

Supplementary text, Supplementary Tables 1–10 and references supporting the reassessment of extinction risk for 892 reef-building coral species. The text describes the methodological updates from the 2008 assessment: coral taxonomy, the interpretation of coral abundance and extinction risk under the IUCN Red List framework, coral cover as a proxy for population reduction, projected thermal stress, generation length, species traits and the Red List Index. It also reports supporting results on Red List criteria applied, genuine and non-genuine changes in classification, and geographic and taxonomic differences.

Supplementary Data (download XLSX )

Species-level results and supporting data for all 892 species assessed. The workbook has two sheets. “Metadata” defines each variable, as in Supplementary Table 10. “Supplementary Dataset 1” gives, for each species: family, current and 2008 species names; Red List category and criteria for 2024, with recalculated categories for 2008 and pre-1998; realm, number of ecoregions, extent of occurrence and coral reef area within range; total and preferred depth ranges; projected population decline under SSP2-4.5 and past coral cover decline (GCRMN); scores for each vulnerability trait; mean, mode and final vulnerability scores.

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Obura, D.O., Polidoro, B., Cabada-Blanco, F. et al. Nearly half of reef-building corals face elevated relative risk of extinction. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11263-3

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  • DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11263-3

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

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