Pacific-wide contrast highlights resistance of reef calcifiers to ocean acidification

• Published in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
• Main Authors: Comeau, S., Carpenter, R. C., Nojiri, Y, Putnam, H. M., Sakai, K., Edmunds, P. J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 2014
• Subjects: Pacific; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.1339; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2014.1339; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rspb.2014.1339

Ocean acidification (OA) and its associated decline in calcium carbonate saturation states is one of the major threats that tropical coral reefs face this century. Previous studies of the effect of OA on coral reef calcifiers have described a wide variety of outcomes for studies using comparable partial pressure of CO 2 ( p CO 2 ) ranges, suggesting that key questions remain unresolved. One unresolved hypothesis posits that heterogeneity in the response of reef calcifiers to high p CO 2 is a result of regional-scale variation in the responses to OA. To test this hypothesis, we incubated two coral taxa ( Pocillopora damicornis and massive Porites ) and two calcified algae ( Porolithon onkodes and Halimeda macroloba ) under 400, 700 and 1000 μatm p CO 2 levels in experiments in Moorea (French Polynesia), Hawaii (USA) and Okinawa (Japan), where environmental conditions differ. Both corals and H. macroloba were insensitive to OA at all three locations, while the effects of OA on P. onkodes were location-specific. In Moorea and Hawaii, calcification of P. onkodes was depressed by high p CO 2 , but for specimens in Okinawa, there was no effect of OA. Using a study of large geographical scale, we show that resistance to OA of some reef species is a constitutive character expressed across the Pacific.