It is a known fact that corals are near extinction. But nature has its own way to keep life moving. In a last earnest effort of the staghorn corals to survive, it has been learnt that they have started cross-breeding with other related species of corals.  

Zoe Richards of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies informed, "This breaks all the traditional rules about what a species is."

This latest astonishing study was published in the journal PLos One. The study claims that the three kinds of Caribbean corals known to mankind may not actually be an individual species but in fact hybrids created by cross fertilization. The names of these three corals are Acropora pichoni, Acropora kimbeensis and Acropora papillare. 

The co-author of the study, Professor David Miller reported, "Hybridising with another species actually makes a lot of genetic sense if you are rare and the next colony of your species may be hundreds of kilometers away."

"Rare Acropora species may therefore be less vulnerable to extinction than has often been assumed because of their propensity for hybridization and introgression, which may increase their adaptive potential," concluded the authors.