Threatened Caribbean coral is able to mitigate the adverse effects of ocean acidification on calcification by increasing feeding rate, supplement to: Towle, Erica K; Enochs, I C; Langdon, Chris (2015): Threatened Caribbean coral is able to mitigate the adverse effects of ocean acidification on calcification by increasing feeding rate. PLoS ONE, 10(4), e0123394

• Main Authors: Towle, Erica K, Enochs, I C, Langdon, Chris
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2015
• Subjects: Acropora cervicornis; Animalia; Behaviour; Benthic animals; Benthos; Biomass/Abundance/Elemental composition; Calcification/Dissolution; Cnidaria; Coast and continental shelf; Containers and aquaria 20-1000 L or < 1 m**2; Laboratory experiment; North Atlantic; Single species; Temperate; Species; Figure; Treatment; Calcification rate of calcium carbonate; Feeding rate; Lipid content; Chlorophyll a; Symbiont cell density; Temperature, water; Temperature, water, standard deviation; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide, standard deviation; Salinity; Salinity, standard deviation; pH; pH, standard deviation; Aragonite saturation state; Aragonite saturation state, standard deviation; Alkalinity, total; Alkalinity, total, standard deviation; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved, standard deviation; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Fugacity of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Bicarbonate ion; Carbonate ion; Calcite saturation state; Calculated using CO2SYS; Potentiometric titration; Coulometric titration; Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. 2010; Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre OA-ICC; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.853608; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.853608

Global climate change threatens coral growth and reef ecosystem health via ocean warming and ocean acidification (OA). Whereas the negative impacts of these stressors are increasingly well-documented, studies identifying pathways to resilience are still poorly understood. Heterotrophy has been shown to help corals experiencing decreases in growth due to either thermal or OA stress; however, the mechanism by which it mitigates these decreases remains unclear. This study tested the ability of coral heterotrophy to mitigate reductions in growth due to climate change stress in the critically endangered Caribbean coral Acropora cervicornis via changes in feeding rate and lipid content. Corals were either fed or unfed and exposed to elevated temperature (30°C), enriched pCO2 (800 ppm), or both (30°C/800 ppm) as compared to a control (26°C/390 ppm) for 8 weeks. Feeding rate and lipid content both increased in corals experiencing OA vs. present-day conditions, and were significantly correlated. Fed corals were able to maintain ambient growth rates at both elevated temperature and elevated CO2, while unfed corals experienced significant decreases in growth with respect to fed conspecifics. Our results show for the first time that a threatened coral species can buffer OA-reduced calcification by increasing feeding rates and lipid content. : In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2015) 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 2015-09-30.