Using the Goldilocks Principle to model coral ecosystem engineering

Hennige, Sebastian; Larsson, Ann I.; Orejas, Covadonga; Gori, Andrea; Clippele, Laurence H. De; Lee, Yeaw Chu; Jimeno, Guillermo; Γεωργούλας, Κωνσταντίνος; Kamenos, Nicholas A.; Roberts, J. Murray

doi:10.1098/rspb.2021.1260

Cited by 23 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Experimental studies also revealed that the current speed for optimal food capture is approximately 2 to 6 cm s −1 , while above these values the food capture rate of CWCs is reduced [ 93 , 94 ]. However, as most field observations around thriving CWC reefs measured much higher ambient current velocities (>10 cm s −1 ; [ 25 , 95 – 98 ] as those experimentally determined, there obviously is a need to study how the coral framework modifies its own local flow environment [ 99 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Major environmental drivers determining life and death of cold-water corals through time

et al. 2022

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Cold-water corals (CWCs) are the engineers of complex ecosystems forming unique biodiversity hotspots in the deep sea. They are expected to suffer dramatically from future environmental changes in the oceans such as ocean warming, food depletion, deoxygenation, and acidification. However, over the last decades of intense deep-sea research, no extinction event of a CWC ecosystem is documented, leaving quite some uncertainty on their sensitivity to these environmental parameters. Paleoceanographic reconstructions offer the opportunity to align the on- and offsets of CWC proliferation to environmental parameters. Here, we present the synthesis of 6 case studies from the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, revealing that food supply controlled by export production and turbulent hydrodynamics at the seabed exerted the strongest impact on coral vitality during the past 20,000 years, whereas locally low oxygen concentrations in the bottom water can act as an additional relevant stressor. The fate of CWCs in a changing ocean will largely depend on how these oceanographic processes will be modulated. Future ocean deoxygenation may be compensated regionally where the food delivery and food quality are optimal.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Major environmental drivers determining life and death of cold-water corals through time

et al. 2022

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“…However, flume tank experiments and modeling studies highlighted the remarkable surface roughness of branching corals with large bottom drag coefficients (Monismith, 2007), which significantly slow down bypassing currents, both on colony-and reef-scale (e.g., Chang et al, 2009;Guihen et al, 2013;Johansen, 2014;Lowe and Falter, 2015;Mienis et al, 2019;Bartzke et al, 2021;Hennige et al, 2021). Hence, the baffling capacity of densely distributed coral frameworks on the mound's surface results in a low energy environment allowing fine suspended sediments to settle even under generally turbulent background conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, comparing surface sediments from coral mounds and near-by seafloor settings already revealed a relative enrichment of fine material on the mounds that was assumed to reflect (a) the winnowing of fine sediments from the seafloor next to the mounds and (b) their subsequent deposition on the mounds forced by coral baffling (Mullins et al, 1981;Paull et al, 2000;Wheeler et al, 2011). In addition, experimental and modeling studies have impressively shown how current velocities are reduced within CWC frameworks favoring the settlement of suspended sediments (e.g., Chang et al, 2009;Mienis et al, 2019;Bartzke et al, 2021;Hennige et al, 2021). However, detailed studies on the processes controlling sediment delivery and deposition on coral mounds and their impact on coral mound formation, notably over longer timescales, are still largely lacking.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Importance of Ecological Accommodation Space and Sediment Supply for Cold-Water Coral Mound Formation, a Case Study From the Western Mediterranean Sea

et al. 2021

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The formation of cold-water coral (CWC) mounds is commonly seen as being the result of the sustained growth of framework-forming CWCs and the concurrent supply and deposition of terrigenous sediments under energetic hydrodynamic conditions. Yet only a limited number of studies investigated the complex interplay of the various hydrodynamic, sedimentological and biological processes involved in mound formation, which, however, focused on the environmental conditions promoting coral growth. Therefore, we are still lacking an in-depth understanding of the processes allowing the on-mound deposition of hemipelagic sediments, which contribute to two thirds of coral mound deposits. To investigate these processes over geological time and to evaluate their contribution to coral mound formation, we reconstructed changes in sediment transport and deposition by comparing sedimentological parameters (grain-size distribution, sediment composition, accumulation rates) of two sediment cores collected from a Mediterranean coral mound and the adjacent seafloor (off-mound). Our results showed that under a turbulent hydrodynamic regime promoting coral growth during the Early Holocene, the deposition of fine siliciclastic sediments shifted from the open seafloor to the coral mounds. This led to a high average mound aggradation rate of >130 cm kyr–1, while sedimentation rates in the adjacent off-mound area at the same time did not exceed 10 cm kyr–1. Thereby, the baffling of suspended sediments by the coral framework and their deposition within the ecological accommodation space provided by the corals seem to be key processes for mound formation. Although, it is commonly accepted that these processes play important roles in various sedimentary environments, our study provided for the first time, core-based empirical data proving the efficiency of these processes in coral mound environment. In addition, our approach to compare the grain-size distribution of the siliciclastic sediments deposited concurrently on a coral mound and on the adjacent seafloor allowed us to investigate the integrated influence of coral mound morphology and coral framework on the mound formation process. Based on these results, this study provides the first conceptual model for coral mound formation by applying sequence stratigraphic concepts, which highlights the interplay of the coral-framework baffling capacity, coral-derived ecological accommodation space and sediment supply.

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“…The introduction of a death rule in the model was a significant step to simulating coral growth. In previous work (Hennige et al, 2021), the death rule was fixed at initialisation and it could not be altered or affected by any other aspect of the live simulations. The current proposed model alters the way that the growth and death rules affect the coral particles.…”

Section: Basic Coral Growth Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics for modelling cold-water coral habitats in changing oceans

Γεωργούλας

Hennige

Lee

2022

Preprint

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The importance of the growth, proliferation and longevity of reef-forming cold-water corals is paramount as they support various complex bio-diverse habitats and provide many essential ecosystem services. These cold-water coral reefs consist of layers of living coral tissue that grow above large masses of coral skeleton. Here, the Goldilocks Principle is used to promote growth in ‘just right’ conditions and model how cold-water corals engineer their habitat to survive and prosper. A computational fluid dynamics model is created based on the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method, a mesh-free Lagrangian numerical method. The SPH solver is written in the C++ programming language and parallelised with OpenMP to improve its efficiency and reduce the execution times. The solver is validated against analytical and numerical solutions.

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Using the Goldilocks Principle to model coral ecosystem engineering

Cited by 23 publications

References 65 publications

Major environmental drivers determining life and death of cold-water corals through time

Major environmental drivers determining life and death of cold-water corals through time

The Importance of Ecological Accommodation Space and Sediment Supply for Cold-Water Coral Mound Formation, a Case Study From the Western Mediterranean Sea

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics for modelling cold-water coral habitats in changing oceans

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