Atmospheric methane levels increased over geological formations in Northern Siberia following a heat wave in 2020, suggesting that permafrost thaw releases methane from reservoirs.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Edited by David M. Karl, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, and approved May 23, 2013 (received for review January 28, 2013)
Abstract
As the surface ocean equilibrates with rising atmospheric CO2, the pH of surface seawater is decreasing with potentially negative impacts on coral calcification. A critical question is whether corals will be able to adapt or acclimate to these changes in seawater chemistry. We use high precision CT scanning of skeletal cores of Porites astreoides, an important Caribbean reef-building coral, to show that calcification rates decrease significantly along a natural gradient in pH and aragonite saturation (Ωarag). This decrease is accompanied by an increase in skeletal erosion and predation by boring organisms. The degree of sensitivity to reduced Ωarag measured on our field corals is consistent with that exhibited by the same species in laboratory CO2 manipulation experiments. We conclude that the Porites corals at our field site were not able to acclimatize enough to prevent the impacts of local ocean acidification on their skeletal growth and development, despite spending their entire lifespan in low pH, low Ωarag seawater.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: apaytan{at}ucsc.edu.
Author contributions: E.D.C. and A.P. designed research; E.D.C., A.L.C., M.R.-V., L.H., and A.P. performed research; A.L.C., M.R.-V., L.H., and A.P. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; E.D.C., A.L.C., and A.P. analyzed data; and E.D.C., A.L.C., and A.P. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1301589110/-/DCSupplemental.
Corals do not acclimate to ocean acidification
See related content:
Sign up for Article Alerts
Jump to section
You May Also be Interested in
Pottery, burnt clay, and burnt flint from Jordan dated from 7752 BCE to 5069 BCE yielded a record of variations in Earth’s magnetic field strength during the Neolithic period.
Image credit: Thomas E. Levy.
Mechanics of ant tunneling could inspire the development of improved robotic mining techniques.
Image credit: Jose E. Andrade and David R. Miller (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA).
New observations now allow the seemingly impossible: measuring the speeds of some stars along the line of sight without ascertaining their Doppler shifts.
Image credit: NASA, H.E. Bond, and E. Nelan (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD); M. Barstow and M. Burleigh (University of Leicester, UK); and J.B. Holberg (University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ).
Evolutionary models suggest that passing the microbiome perfectly from parent to offspring is beneficial in constant environments.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Frances van der Merwe.