Resistance to ocean acidification in coral reef taxa is not gained by acclimatization

• Published in: Nature Climate Change
• Main Authors: Comeau, S., Cornwall, C. E., De Carlo, Thomas Mario, Doo, S. S., Carpenter, R. C., McCulloch, M. T.
• Other Authors: Red Sea Research Center (RSRC), The University of Western Australia, Oceans Graduate School, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, Department of Biology, California State University, Northridge, CA, USA
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2019
• Subjects: Ocean acidification
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10754/656379; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0486-9

Ocean acidification (OA) is a major threat to coral reefs, which are built by calcareous species. However, long-term assessments of the impacts of OA are scarce, limiting the understanding of the capacity of corals and coralline algae to acclimatize to high partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) levels. Species-specific sensitivities to OA are influenced by its impacts on chemistry within the calcifying fluid (CF). Here, we investigate the capacity of multiple coral and calcifying macroalgal species to acclimatize to elevated pCO2 by determining their chemistry in the CF during a year-long experiment. We found no evidence of acclimatization to elevated pCO2 across any of the tested taxa. The effects of increasing seawater pCO2 on the CF chemistry were rapid and persisted until the end of the experiment. Our results show that acclimatization of the CF chemistry does not occur within one year, which confirms the threat of OA for future reef accretion and ecological function. We thank A.-M. Comeau-Nisumaa, J. D’Olivo and P. Edmunds for support for this study. Funding support was as follows: M.T.M. by an ARC Laureate Fellowship (LF120100049) and ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CE140100020); S.C. by an ARC DECRA (DE160100668); C.E.C. by ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CE140100020) and a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (Royal Society of New Zealand; RDF-VUW1701); R.C.C. by a National Science Foundation grant OCE 14-15268, the Moorea Coral Reef LTER programme (NSF OCE 12-36905) and from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The authors also acknowledge the facilities, and scientific and technical assistance, of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis (CMCA). Research was completed under permits issued by the Haut-commissariat de la République en Polynésie Francaise (DRRT) (Protocole d’Accueil 2015–2016). This is contribution number 286 of the CSUN Marine Biology Program.