In the summer of 2019, eight undergraduate research volunteers in Dr. Andréa Grottoli’s lab assisted SES PhD candidates, Rowan McLachlan and James Price, and recent OSU graduate, Sarah Solomon, in gathering methodological data from 255 publications that conducted coral bleaching experiments over the last 30 years. The aim of this review was to characterize how experimental design varies among studies of coral bleaching, and to highlight areas which could benefit from increased congruence to help move the field forward more efficiently and effectively. They found that two-thirds of studies were conducted in only three countries with three coral species more heavily studied than any others, suggesting that the great number of bleaching experiments to date may only encompass a small proportion of the world’s coral reefs and coral diversity. In addition, most bleaching experiments were found to be less than eight days in duration, with wide variability in experimental conditions, including the level of heat-stress, light intensity, and sample sizes used. Interestingly, they found vast inconsistency in the way these experimental variables have been reported throughout the past three decades if they were reported at all. Some variables, such as water flow conditions, the date of the experiment, and even the degree of coral bleaching were not reported in several publications. Overall, this review highlights geographic, taxonomic, and heat-stress duration biases that may influence our understanding of coral bleaching, while identifying areas where coral bleaching research has the potential to be more open and effective. Read more here!