Seawater carbonate chemistry and survival, growth rate, zooxanthellae density, maximum photosynthetic efficiency of Favites colemani

DOI

Tropical coral reefs are threatened by local-scale stressors that are exacerbated by global ocean warming and acidification from the post-industrial increase of atmospheric CO2 levels. Despite their observed decline in the past four decades, little is known on how Philippine coral reefs will respond to ocean warming and acidification. This study explored individual and synergistic effects of present-day (pH 8.0, 28°C) and near-future (pH 7.7, 32°C) scenarios of ocean temperature and pH on the adult Favites colemani, a common massive reef-building coral in Bolinao-Anda, Philippines. Changes in seawater temperature drive the physiological responses of F. colemani, whereas changes in pH create an additive effect on survival, growth, and photosynthetic efficiency. Under near-future scenarios, F. colemani showed sustained photosynthetic competency despite the decline in growth rate and zooxanthellae density. F. colemani exhibited specificity with the Cladocopium clade C3u. This coral experienced lower growth rates but survived projected near-future ocean warming and acidification scenarios. Its pH-thermal stress threshold is possibly a consequence of acclimation and adaptation to local environmental conditions and past bleaching events. This research highlights the importance of examining the susceptibility and resilience of Philippine corals to climate-driven stressors for future conservation and restoration efforts in the changing ocean.

In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2021) 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). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation by seacarb is 2022-03-28.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.942712
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.704487
Related Identifier https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/seacarb/index.html
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.942712
Provenance
Creator Tañedo, Mikhael Clotilde S; Villanueva, Ronald D; Torres, Andrew F ORCID logo; Ravago-Gotanco, Rachel ORCID logo; San Diego-McGlone, Maria Lourdes
Publisher PANGAEA
Contributor Yang, Yan
Publication Year 2021
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 144 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (119.903 LON, 16.412 LAT)
Temporal Coverage Begin 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2016-01-31T00:00:00Z