Effects of sediment load on respiration, growth and behaviour of the juvenile cold-water coral Caryophyllia (Caryophyllia) huinayensis ...

• Main Authors: Fähse, Melanie, Laudien, Jürgen, Orejas, Covadonga, Häussermann, Verena, Försterra, Günter
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2023
• Subjects: Cold-water Scleractinia; Comau Fjord; Coral growth; Juvenile Caryophyllia Caryophyllia huinayensis; Laboratory experiment; Physiological performance; Respiration; Sedimentation stress; Monitoring station; Bentho-Pelagic Processes @ AWI AWI_BPP; Integrated Assessment of Atlantic Marine Ecosystems in Space and Time iAtlantic; Alfred Wegener Institute
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.941516; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.941516

The aim of this work was to investigate whether increased sediment concentrations affect the physiological performance of juvenile specimens of the cold-water coral Caryophyllia (Caryophyllia) huinayesis by measuring growth, behaviour and respiration rates of the corals over a period of three months. The study consists of an in vitro experiment which included three different treatments: i) the control with the current natural sediment concentration of Chilean Comau Fjord, ii) a 100-fold sediment concentration of the control, and iii) a 1000-fold sediment concentration of the control. Coral recruits were taken from the aquarium facilities of the Alfred-Wegener-Institute (Bremerhaven, Germany). These were offspring of adults of C. huinayensis collected by scientific SCUBA divers in 2015 from Comau Fjord, which have successfully acclimatized and reproduced in the laboratory aquaria (see Laudien et al., 2018, 2019, 2021). Growth was measured with the buoyant weight technique and via the increase in calyx ... : This dataset was generated within the framework of the co-operation between the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (programme: 'Changing Earth – Sustaining our Future', Topic 4.2), the Huinay Scientific Field Station, European Union's Horizon 2020 iAtlantic project (Grant Agreement No. 818123) and the Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences of the University of Bremen. ...