Coral calcifying fluid pH dictates response to ocean acidification

DOI

Ocean acidification driven by rising levels of CO2 impairs calcification, threatening coral reef growth. Predicting how corals respond to CO2 requires a better understanding of how calcification is controlled. Here we show how spatial variations in the pH of the internal calcifying fluid (pHcf) in coral (Stylophora pistillata) colonies correlates with differential sensitivity of calcification to acidification. Coral apexes had the highest pHcf and experienced the smallest changes in pHcf in response to acidification. Lateral growth was associated with lower pHcf and greater changes with acidification. Calcification showed a pattern similar to pHcf, with lateral growth being more strongly affected by acidification than apical. Regulation of pHcf is therefore spatially variable within a coral and critical to determining the sensitivity of calcification to ocean acidification.

In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2015) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI).

Supplement to: Holcomb, Michael; Venn, Alexander A; Tambutté, Eric; Tambutté, Sylvie; Allemand, Denis; Trotter, Julie; McCulloch, Malcolm T (2014): Coral calcifying fluid pH dictates response to ocean acidification. Scientific Reports, 4

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.843920
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1038/srep05207
Related Identifier https://cran.r-project.org/package=seacarb
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.843920
Provenance
Creator Holcomb, Michael; Venn, Alexander A ORCID logo; Tambutté, Eric ORCID logo; Tambutté, Sylvie ORCID logo; Allemand, Denis; Trotter, Julie (ORCID: 0000-0002-0505-488X); McCulloch, Malcolm T ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Contributor Yang, Yan
Publication Year 2014
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 2090 data points
Discipline Earth System Research