The morphological response of Emiliania huxleyi to seawater carbonate chemistry changes: an inter-strain comparison

Four strains of the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi (RCC1212, RCC1216, RCC1238, RCC1256) were grown in dilute batch culture at four CO2 levels ranging from ~200 µatm to ~1200 µatm. Coccolith morphology was analyzed based on scanning electron micrographs. Three of the four strains did not exhibit a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Langer, Gerald, Probert, Ian, Nehrke, Gernot, Ziveri, Patrizia
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: PANGAEA 2011
Subjects:
Alkalinity
total
Aragonite saturation state
Bicarbonate ion
BIOACID
Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification
Bottles or small containers/Aquaria (<20 L)
Calcite saturation state
Calculated using CO2SYS
Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. (2010)
Carbon
inorganic
dissolved
Carbonate ion
Carbonate system computation flag
Carbon dioxide
Chromista
Coccoliths
incomplete
standard deviation
malformed and incomplete
normal
Emiliania huxleyi
EPOCA
European Project on Ocean Acidification
Event label
EXP
Experiment
Fugacity of carbon dioxide (water) at sea surface temperature (wet air)
Growth/Morphology
Haptophyta
Laboratory experiment
Laboratory strains
Malformation rate
Mediterranean Sea Acidification in a Changing Climate
MedSeA
Nitrate
North_Atlantic_OA
Ocean acidification
Online Access:https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.826456
https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.826456
Description
Summary:Four strains of the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi (RCC1212, RCC1216, RCC1238, RCC1256) were grown in dilute batch culture at four CO2 levels ranging from ~200 µatm to ~1200 µatm. Coccolith morphology was analyzed based on scanning electron micrographs. Three of the four strains did not exhibit a change in morphology over the CO2 range tested. One strain (RCC1256) displayed an increase in the percentage of malformed coccoliths with increasing CO2 concentration. We conclude that the sensitivity of the coccolith-shaping machinery to carbonate chemistry changes is strain-specific. Although it has been shown before that carbonate chemistry related changes in growth- and calcification rate are strain-specific, there seems to be no consistent correlation between coccolith morphology and growth or calcification rate. We did not observe an increase in the percentage of incomplete coccoliths in RCC1256, indicating that the coccolith-shaping machinery per se is affected by acidification and not the signalling pathway that produces the stop-signal for coccolith growth.

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