Seawater carbonate chemistry and structural integrity of the coralline algae Lithothamnion glaciale in a laboratory experiment, supplement to: Ragazzola, Federica; Foster, Laura C; Form, Armin; Anderson, Phillip S L; Hansteen, Thor H; Fietzke, Jan (2012): Ocean acidification weakens the structural integrity of coralline algae. Global Change Biology, 18(9), 2804-2812

• Main Authors: Ragazzola, Federica, Foster, Laura C, Form, Armin, Anderson, Phillip S L, Hansteen, Thor H, Fietzke, Jan
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2012
• Subjects: Benthos; Biomass/Abundance/Elemental composition; Bottles or small containers/Aquaria <20 L; Coast and continental shelf; Growth/Morphology; Laboratory experiment; Lithothamnion glaciale; Macroalgae; North Atlantic; Plantae; Rhodophyta; Single species; Temperate; Species; Treatment; Growth rate; Growth rate, standard deviation; Coralline algae, wall thickness, intra filament; Coralline algae, wall thickness, intra filament, standard deviation; Coralline algae, wall thickness, inter filament, standard deviation; Cell density; Cell density, standard deviation; pH; pH, standard deviation; Salinity; Salinity, standard deviation; Temperature, water; Temperature, standard deviation; Alkalinity, total; Alkalinity, total, standard deviation; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved, standard deviation; Bicarbonate ion; Bicarbonate ion, standard deviation; Calcite saturation state; Calcite saturation state, standard deviation; Aragonite saturation state; Aragonite saturation state, standard deviation; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide, standard deviation; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Fugacity of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Carbonate ion; Experiment; Potentiometric; Potentiometric titration; Calculated using CO2SYS; Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. 2010; Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification BIOACID; Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre OA-ICC; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.823460; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.823460

The uptake of anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide is resulting in a lowering of the carbonate saturation state and a drop in ocean pH. Understanding how marine calcifying organisms such as coralline algae may acclimatize to ocean acidification is important to understand their survival over the coming century. We present the first long-term perturbation experiment on the cold-water coralline algae, which are important marine calcifiers in the benthic ecosystems particularly at the higher latitudes. Lithothamnion glaciale, after three months incubation, continued to calcify even in undersaturated conditions with a significant trend towards lower growth rates with increasing pCO2. However, the major changes in the ultra-structure occur by 589 µatm (i.e. in saturated waters). Finite element models of the algae grown at these heightened levels show an increase in the total strain energy of nearly an order of magnitude and an uneven distribution of the stress inside the skeleton when subjected to similar loads as algae grown at ambient levels. This weakening of the structure is likely to reduce the ability of the alga to resist boring by predators and wave energy with severe consequences to the benthic community structure in the immediate future (50 years). : In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Lavigne and Gattuso, 2011) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation by seacarb is 2013-11-29.