Selectively breeding corals can significantly boost their heat tolerance, offering a short-term lifeline for the world's endangered reef systems as ocean temperatures rise due to climate change, new research said on Monday.

Researchers successfully bred heat-tolerant corals at Ningaloo Reef, a World Heritage site off Australia's northwest coast. Like many others globally, the reef faces increasing threats from marine heatwaves and mass bleaching events, according to a release from Minderoo Foundation in Western Australia that supported the research project.

Coral offspring with at least one parent from warmer reef zones had double the survival rate under extreme heat stress compared to those from cooler regions, said the team at Minderoo Foundation, alongside partners from the University of Western Australia, James Cook University in Queensland, the University of Bremen in Germany, and Texas A&M University in the United States.