Coral calcification in a changing World and the interactive dynamics of pH and DIC upregulation

Malcolm T. McCulloch (), Juan Pablo D’Olivo, James Falter, Michael Holcomb and Julie A. Trotter
Additional contact information
Malcolm T. McCulloch: Oceans Institute and School of Earth Sciences, The University of Western Australia
Juan Pablo D’Olivo: Oceans Institute and School of Earth Sciences, The University of Western Australia
James Falter: Oceans Institute and School of Earth Sciences, The University of Western Australia
Michael Holcomb: Oceans Institute and School of Earth Sciences, The University of Western Australia
Julie A. Trotter: Oceans Institute and School of Earth Sciences, The University of Western Australia

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Coral calcification is dependent on the mutualistic partnership between endosymbiotic zooxanthellae and the coral host. Here, using newly developed geochemical proxies (δ11B and B/Ca), we show that Porites corals from natural reef environments exhibit a close (r2 ∼0.9) antithetic relationship between dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and pH of the corals’ calcifying fluid (cf). The highest DICcf (∼ × 3.2 seawater) is found during summer, consistent with thermal/light enhancement of metabolically (zooxanthellae) derived carbon, while the highest pHcf (∼8.5) occurs in winter during periods of low DICcf (∼ × 2 seawater). These opposing changes in DICcf and pHcf are shown to maintain oversaturated but stable levels of carbonate saturation (Ωcf ∼ × 5 seawater), the key parameter controlling coral calcification. These findings are in marked contrast to artificial experiments and show that pHcf upregulation occurs largely independent of changes in seawater carbonate chemistry, and hence ocean acidification, but is highly vulnerable to thermally induced stress from global warming.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15686 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms15686

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15686

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().