Eutrophication may compromise the resilience of the Red Sea coral Stylophora pistillata to global change

Hall, Emily R.; Muller, Erinn M.; Goulet, Tamar L.; Bellworthy, Jessica; Ritchie, Kim B.; Fine, Maoz

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2018.04.067

Cited by 41 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…NH 4 ‐enriched corals may require this supplementary carbon source to maintain a proper balance between C assimilation and N assimilation, in agreement with a recent theory, arguing that corals require balanced N‐to‐P ratio in seawater to avoid the disruption of the symbiosis (Wiedenmann et al, ). This observation might further explain the discrepancy between studies, which reported a breakdown of the symbiosis under enrichment in dissolved inorganic nitrogen, and those that did not (Béraud et al, ; Bongiorni, Shafir, & Rinkevich, ; Ezzat et al, ; Ezzat, Towle et al, ; Ferrier‐Pagès, Gattuso, Dallot, & Jaubert, ; Hall et al, ; Tanaka, Grottoli, Matsui, Suzuki, & Sakai, ; Wiedenmann et al, ). Overall, we show here that autotrophy is required for the maintenance of heterotrophic capacities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Nutrient starvation impairs the trophic plasticity of reef‐building corals under ocean warming

et al. 2019

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Global warming of the world's oceans is driving reef‐building corals towards their upper thermal limit, inducing bleaching, nutrient starvation and mortality. In addition, corals are predicted to experience large fluctuations in seawater nutrient concentrations, following water column stratification or eutrophication problems, which can further alter their nutritional capacities and ultimately their resilience to global change. We investigated the effect of thermal stress and dissolved inorganic nutrient (DINUT) availability on the auto‐ and heterotrophic nutritional capacities of corals. In particular, we assessed the effect of nitrogen enrichment or DINUT depletion (both in nitrogen and in phosphorus) on the assimilation of heterotrophic nutrients and on the heat‐stress tolerance of the reef‐building coral Stylophora pistillata. Here, we show that DINUT depletion enhanced coral bleaching under thermal stress and more importantly, significantly impaired rates of heterotrophic nutrient assimilation, inducing coral starvation. In contrast, corals grown under nitrogen enrichment maintained high rates of heterotrophic nutrient assimilation and avoided bleaching, although nutrient uptake rates were lowered. We therefore observed a positive coupling between auto‐ and heterotrophy within the coral–dinoflagellate symbiosis, indicating that heterotrophic processes require a minimum of autotrophically acquired nutrients to be functional. These findings show that the trophic plasticity of corals directly depends on the availability of dissolved inorganic nutrients in seawater. The lack of a shift towards greater heterotrophy under DINUT depletion may lead to substantial modifications of the role that feeding plays in the response of reef‐building corals to climate change. A plain language summary is available for this article.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Nutrient starvation impairs the trophic plasticity of reef‐building corals under ocean warming

et al. 2019

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“…Moreover, the discharge of insufficiently treated sewage from marine outfalls (i.e., pipe discharge) as a point-source (Risk et al, 2009b;Al-Farawati, 2010) was already shown to raise near-shore N availability (Sawall et al, 2014b), affect planktonic (Pearman et al, 2018) and coral (Ziegler et al, 2016) microbial communities and reach nearby reefs (Risk et al, 2009b;Peña-García et al, 2014). As nutrients, among several stressors, have the largest effect on Red Sea hard coral resilience to climate change (Hall et al, 2018), a deeper understanding of the community response to eutrophication is fundamental.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nitrogen eutrophication particularly promotes turf algae in coral reefs of the central Red Sea

Karcher

Roth

Carvalho

et al. 2020

PeerJ

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While various sources increasingly release nutrients to the Red Sea, knowledge about their effects on benthic coral reef communities is scarce. Here, we provide the first comparative assessment of the response of all major benthic groups (hard and soft corals, turf algae and reef sands—together accounting for 80% of the benthic reef community) to in-situ eutrophication in a central Red Sea coral reef. For 8 weeks, dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentrations were experimentally increased 3-fold above environmental background concentrations around natural benthic reef communities using a slow release fertilizer with 15% total nitrogen (N) content. We investigated which major functional groups took up the available N, and how this changed organic carbon (Corg) and N contents using elemental and stable isotope measurements. Findings revealed that hard corals (in their tissue), soft corals and turf algae incorporated fertilizer N as indicated by significant increases in δ15N by 8%, 27% and 28%, respectively. Among the investigated groups, Corg content significantly increased in sediments (+24%) and in turf algae (+33%). Altogether, this suggests that among the benthic organisms only turf algae were limited by N availability and thus benefited most from N addition. Thereby, based on higher Corg content, turf algae potentially gained competitive advantage over, for example, hard corals. Local management should, thus, particularly address DIN eutrophication by coastal development and consider the role of turf algae as potential bioindicator for eutrophication.

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“…Climate warming, eutrophication, and coastal development are serious pressures on the Red Sea ecosystem (e.g. Raitsos et al 2011;Naumann et al 2015;Hall et al 2018). Although not always recognized as such, the NHMW and the other institutions that preserve similar historical samples are a strategic asset in global change research (Johnson et al 2011;Lister 2011;Albano et al 2014;Dayan and Galil 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An illustrated catalogue of Rudolf Sturany’s type specimens in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria (NHMW): Red Sea bivalves

Albano¹,

Schnedl²,

Janssen³

et al. 2019

ZSE

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Rudolf Sturany, the curator of molluscs of the Natural History Museum of Vienna between the late 19 th and early 20 th century described 21 species of bivalves from the Red Sea collected by the pioneering expeditions of the vessel "Pola" which took place between 1895 and 1898. We here list and illustrate the type material of these species, provide the original descriptions, a translation into English, and curatorial and taxonomic comments. All species are illustrated in colour and with SEM imaging. To stabilize the nomenclature, we designate lectotypes for Gastrochaena weinkauffi, Cuspidaria brachyrhynchus, and C. dissociata, whose type series contained specimens belonging to other species. This paper concludes the series on the type specimens of marine molluscs described by Sturany from the "Pola" expeditions.

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Eutrophication may compromise the resilience of the Red Sea coral Stylophora pistillata to global change

Cited by 41 publications

References 88 publications

Nutrient starvation impairs the trophic plasticity of reef‐building corals under ocean warming

Nutrient starvation impairs the trophic plasticity of reef‐building corals under ocean warming

Nitrogen eutrophication particularly promotes turf algae in coral reefs of the central Red Sea

An illustrated catalogue of Rudolf Sturany’s type specimens in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria (NHMW): Red Sea bivalves

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