Publication Date:
2024-03-15
Description:
This study investigated the impacts of acidified seawater (pCO2 900 µatm) and elevated water temperature (+3 °C) on the early life history stages of Acropora spicifera from the subtropical Houtman Abrolhos Islands (28°S) in Western Australia. Settlement rates were unaffected by high temperature (27 °C, 250 µatm), high pCO2 (24 °C, 900 µatm), or a combination of both high temperature and high pCO2 treatments (27 °C, 900 µatm). There were also no significant differences in rates of post-settlement survival after 4 weeks of exposure between any of the treatments, with survival ranging from 60 to 70 % regardless of treatment. Similarly, calcification, as determined by the skeletal weight of recruits, was unaffected by an increase in water temperature under both ambient and high pCO2 conditions. In contrast, high pCO2 significantly reduced early skeletal development, with mean skeletal weight in the high pCO2 and combined treatments reduced by 60 and 48 %, respectively, compared to control weights. Elevated temperature appeared to have a partially mitigative effect on calcification under high pCO2; however, this effect was not significant. Our results show that rates of settlement, post-settlement survival, and calcification in subtropical corals are relatively resilient to increases in temperature. This is in marked contrast to the sensitivity to temperature reported for the majority of tropical larvae and recruits in the literature. The subtropical corals in this study appear able to withstand an increase in temperature of 3 °C above ambient, indicating that they may have a wider thermal tolerance range and may not be adversely affected by initial increases in water temperature from subtropical 24 to 27 °C. However, the reduction in skeletal weight with high pCO2 indicates that early skeletal formation will be highly vulnerable to the changes in ocean pCO2 expected to occur over the twenty-first century, with implications for their longer-term growth and resilience.
Keywords:
Abrolhos_Islands; Acropora spicifera; Alkalinity, total; Alkalinity, total, standard deviation; Animalia; Aragonite saturation state; Aragonite saturation state, standard deviation; Benthic animals; Benthos; Bicarbonate ion; Calcification/Dissolution; Calcification rate; Calcification rate, standard error; Calcite saturation state; Calculated using CO2SYS; Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. (2010); Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Carbonate ion; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Cnidaria; Coast and continental shelf; Containers and aquaria (20-1000 L or 〈 1 m**2); EXP; Experiment; Fugacity of carbon dioxide (water) at sea surface temperature (wet air); Laboratory experiment; Mass; Mass, standard error; Mortality/Survival; OA-ICC; Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide, standard deviation; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide (water) at sea surface temperature (wet air); pH; pH, standard deviation; Registration number of species; Reproduction; Salinity; Settlement; Settlement, standard error; Single species; South Pacific; Species; Survival; Survival rate, standard error; Temperate; Temperature; Temperature, water; Temperature, water, standard deviation; Treatment; Type; Uniform resource locator/link to reference
Type:
Dataset
Format:
text/tab-separated-values, 132 data points
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