Response of benthic foraminifera to ocean acidification in their natural sediment environment: a long-term culturing experiment ...

• Main Authors: Haynert, Kristin, Schönfeld, Joachim, Schiebel, Ralf, Wilson, Brent, Thomsen, Jörn
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2014
• Subjects: Ammonia aomoriensis; Ammotium cassis; Armorella sphaerica; Baltic Sea; Benthos; Coast and continental shelf; Community composition and diversity; Elphidium excavatum clavatum; Elphidium excavatum excavatum; Elphidium gerthi; Elphidium incertum; Entire community; Field observation; Growth/Morphology; Reophax dentaliniformis; Soft-bottom community; Temperate; Figure; Table; Comment; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Species; Number of specimens; Number of specimens, standard deviation; Percentage; Incubation duration; Abundance; Size; Percentage, standard deviation; Diameter; Diameter, standard deviation; Calcium carbonate, mass per individual; Calcium carbonate, mass per individual, standard deviation; Abundance, standard deviation; Mass; Mass, standard deviation; Replicates; Replicate; Calcium carbonate, mass; Individuals; Temperature, water; Temperature, water, standard deviation; Salinity; Salinity, standard deviation; pH; pH, standard deviation; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Phosphate; Phosphate, standard deviation; Silicate; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.833014; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.833014

Calcifying foraminifera are expected to be endangered by ocean acidification; however, the response of a complete community kept in natural sediment and over multiple generations under controlled laboratory conditions has not been constrained to date. During 6 months of incubation, foraminiferal assemblages were kept and treated in natural sediment with pCO2-enriched seawater of 430, 907, 1865 and 3247 µatm pCO2. The fauna was dominated by Ammonia aomoriensis and Elphidium species, whereas agglutinated species were rare. After 6 months of incubation, pore water alkalinity was much higher in comparison to the overlying seawater. Consequently, the saturation state of Omega calc was much higher in the sediment than in the water column in nearly all pCO2 treatments and remained close to saturation. As a result, the life cycle (population density, growth and reproduction) of living assemblages varied markedly during the experimental period, but was largely unaffected by the pCO2 treatments applied. According to ... : In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Lavigne et al, 2014) 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 is 2014-05-27. ...