Seawater carbonate chemistry and biogenic habitat shifts under long-term ocean acidification ...

• Main Authors: Milazzo, Marco, Alessi, Cinzia, Quattrocchi, Federico, Chemello, Renato, D'Agostaro, R, Gil, J, Vaccaro, A M, Mirto, Simone, Gristina, Michele, Badalamenti, F
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2023
• Subjects: Benthos; Biomass/Abundance/Elemental composition; CO2 vent; Coast and continental shelf; Community composition and diversity; Entire community; Field experiment; Mediterranean Sea; Rocky-shore community; Temperate; Type of study; Site; Identification; Replicate; Density; Coverage; Species richness; Abundance; Complexity; Salinity; Salinity, standard error; Temperature, water; Temperature, water, standard error; pH; pH, standard error; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air, standard error; Alkalinity, total; Alkalinity, total, standard error; Aragonite saturation state; Aragonite saturation state, standard error; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Fugacity of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Bicarbonate ion; Carbonate ion; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Calcite saturation state; Experiment; Potentiometric; Calculated using CO2SYS; Potentiometric 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.959591; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.959591

Experiments have shown that increasing dissolved CO2 concentrations (i.e. Ocean Acidification, OA) in marine ecosystems may act as nutrient for primary producers (e.g. fleshy algae) or a stressor for calcifying species (e.g., coralline algae, corals, molluscs). For the first time, rapid habitat dominance shifts and altered competitive replacement from a reef-forming to a non-reef-forming biogenic habitat were documented over one-year exposure to low pH/high CO2 through a transplant experiment off Vulcano Island CO2 seeps (NE Sicily, Italy). Ocean acidification decreased vermetid reefs complexity via a reduction in the reef-building species density, boosted canopy macroalgae and led to changes in composition, structure and functional diversity of the associated benthic assemblages. OA effects on invertebrate richness and abundance were nonlinear, being maximal at intermediate complexity levels of vermetid reefs and canopy forming algae. Abundance of higher order consumers (e.g. carnivores, suspension feeders) ... : In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2022) 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 2023-06-05. ...