Integrating the Effects of Ocean Acidification across Functional Scales on Tropical Coral Reefs

• Published in: BioScience
• Main Authors: Edmunds, Peter J., Comeau, Steeve, Lantz, Coulson, Andersson, Andreas, Briggs, Cherie, Cohen, Anne, Gattuso, Jean-Pierre, Grady, John M., Gross, Kevin, Johnson, Maggie, Muller, Erik B., Ries, Justin B, Tambutté, Sylvie, Tambutté, Eric, Venn, Alex, Carpenter, Robert C.
• Other Authors: California State University Northridge (CSUN), The University of Western Australia (UWA), Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO - UC San Diego), University of California San Diego (UC San Diego), University of California (UC)-University of California (UC), University of California Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara), University of California (UC), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Laboratoire d'océanographie de Villefranche (LOV), Observatoire océanologique de Villefranche-sur-mer (OOVM), Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, North Carolina State University Raleigh (NC State), University of North Carolina System (UNC), Marine Science Institute Santa Barbara (MSI), Northeastern University's Marine Science Center, Northeastern University Boston, Centre Scientifique de Monaco (CSM)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2016
• Subjects: coral reefs; functional scales; Ocean acidifcation; ecosystem; theoretical models; scleractinians; scaling; [SDE.BE]Environmental Sciences/Biodiversity and Ecology; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-01304138; https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-01304138/document; https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-01304138/file/Gattuso_Integrating_the.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biw023

International audience There are concerns about the future of coral reefs in the face of ocean acidification and warming, and although studies of these phenomena have advanced quickly, efforts have focused on pieces of the puzzle rather than integrating them to evaluate ecosystem-level effects. The field is now poised to begin this task, but there are information gaps that first must be overcome before progress can be made. Many of these gaps focus on calcification at the levels of cells, organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystem, and their closure will be made difficult by the complexity of the interdependent processes by which coral reefs respond to ocean acidification, with effects scaling from cells to ecosystems and from microns to kilometers. Existing ecological theories provide an important and largely untapped resource for overcoming these difficulties, and they offer great potential for integrating the effects of ocean acidification across scales on coral reefs.