Thermal stress reduces pocilloporid coral resilience to ocean acidification by impairing control over calcifying fluid chemistry

Maxence Guillermic; Louise P Cameron; Ilian De Corte; Sambuddha Misra; Jelle Bijma; Dirk de Beer; Claire E Reymond; Hildegard Westphal; Justin B Ries; Robert A Eagle

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba9958

Thermal stress reduces pocilloporid coral resilience to ocean acidification by impairing control over calcifying fluid chemistry

Sci Adv. 2021 Jan 8;7(2):eaba9958. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aba9958. Print 2021 Jan.

Authors

Maxence Guillermic^{1

2

3}, Louise P Cameron^{4

5

6}, Ilian De Corte^{7

2}, Sambuddha Misra^{8

9}, Jelle Bijma¹⁰, Dirk de Beer¹¹, Claire E Reymond^{6

12}, Hildegard Westphal^{6

13}, Justin B Ries^{4

6}, Robert A Eagle^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, 520 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. maxence.guillermic@gmail.com robeagle@g.ucla.edu.
² Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, 595 Charles Young Drive E, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
³ Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer, LGO, Rue Dumont d'Urville, Université de Brest Occidentale, 29280, Plouzané, France.
⁴ Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Marine Science Center, Northeastern University, 430 Nahant Rd, Nahant, MA 01908, USA.
⁵ McLean Laboratory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,360 Woods Hole Rd, Falmouth, MA 02543, USA.
⁶ The Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), Fahrenheitstraße 6, 28359 Bremen, Germany.
⁷ Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, 520 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
⁸ Centre for Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560012, India.
⁹ The Godwin Laboratory for Palaeoclimate Research, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
¹⁰ Marine Biogeosciences, Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Am Handelshafen 12, 27570 Bremerhaven, Germany.
¹¹ Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Celsiusstraße 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany.
¹² State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences (CUG), 388 Lumo Rd, Hongshan, Wuhan 430074, P. R. China.
¹³ Department of Geosciences, Bremen University, 28359 Bremen, Germany.

Abstract

The combination of thermal stress and ocean acidification (OA) can more negatively affect coral calcification than an individual stressors, but the mechanism behind this interaction is unknown. We used two independent methods (microelectrode and boron geochemistry) to measure calcifying fluid pH (pH_cf) and carbonate chemistry of the corals Pocillopora damicornis and Stylophora pistillata grown under various temperature and pCO₂ conditions. Although these approaches demonstrate that they record pH_cf over different time scales, they reveal that both species can cope with OA under optimal temperatures (28°C) by elevating pH_cf and aragonite saturation state (Ω_cf) in support of calcification. At 31°C, neither species elevated these parameters as they did at 28°C and, likewise, could not maintain substantially positive calcification rates under any pH treatment. These results reveal a previously uncharacterized influence of temperature on coral pH_cf regulation-the apparent mechanism behind the negative interaction between thermal stress and OA on coral calcification.

Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't