Decline in Coccolithophore Diversity and Impact on Coccolith Morphogenesis Along a Natural CO2 Gradient, supplement to: Ziveri, Patrizia; Passaro, Marcello; Incarbona, Alessandro; Milazzo, Marco; Rodolfo-Metalpa, Riccardo; Hall-Spencer, Jason M (2014): Decline in Coccolithophore Diversity and Impact on Coccolith Morphogenesis Along a Natural CO2 Gradient. Biological Bulletin, 226(3), 282-290

• Main Authors: Ziveri, Patrizia, Passaro, Marcello, Incarbona, Alessandro, Milazzo, Marco, Rodolfo-Metalpa, Riccardo, Hall-Spencer, Jason M
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2014
• Subjects: Biomass/Abundance/Elemental composition; CO2 vent; Coast and continental shelf; Community composition and diversity; Entire community; Field observation; Growth/Morphology; Mediterranean Sea; Pelagos; Phytoplankton; Temperate; Sample ID; Temperature, water; Salinity; pH; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Alkalinity, total; Calcite saturation state; Coccospheres; Number of species; Coccospheres, malformed; Coccospheres, corroded; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Fugacity of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Bicarbonate ion; Carbonate ion; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Aragonite saturation state; Potentiometric; Calculated using CO2SYS; Potentiometric titration; Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. 2010; Mediterranean Sea Acidification in a Changing Climate MedSeA; Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre OA-ICC; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.838830; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.838830

A natural pH gradient caused by marine CO2 seeps off Vulcano Island (Italy) was used to assess the effects of ocean acidification on coccolithophores, which are abundant planktonic unicellular calcifiers. Such seeps are used as natural laboratories to study the effects of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems, since they cause long-term changes in seawater carbonate chemistry and pH, exposing the organisms to elevated CO2 concentrations and therefore mimicking future scenarios. Previous work at CO2 seeps has focused exclusively on benthic organisms. Here we show progressive depletion of 27 coccolithophore species, in terms of cell concentrations and diversity, along a calcite saturation gradient from Omega calcite 6.4 to <1. Water collected close to the main CO2 seeps had the highest concentrations of malformed Emiliania huxleyi. These observations add to a growing body of evidence that ocean acidification may benefit some algae but will likely cause marine biodiversity loss, especially by impacting calcifying species, which are affected as carbonate saturation falls. : 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 2014-11-12.