Dataset Information

The northern limit of corals of the genus Acropora in temperate zones is determined by their resilience to cold bleaching.

ABSTRACT: The distribution of corals in Japan covers a wide range of latitudes, encompassing tropical to temperate zones. However, coral communities in temperate zones contain only a small subset of species. Among the parameters that determine the distribution of corals, temperature plays an important role. We tested the resilience to cold stress of three coral species belonging to the genus Acropora in incubation experiments. Acropora pruinosa, which is the northernmost of the three species, bleached at 13?°C, but recovered once temperatures were increased. The two other species, A. hyacinthus and A. solitaryensis, which has a more southerly range than A. pruinosa, died rapidly after bleaching at 13?°C. The physiological effects of cold bleaching on the corals included decreased rates of photosynthesis, respiration, and calcification, similar to the physiological effects observed with bleaching due to high temperature stress. Contrasting hot bleaching, no increases in antioxidant enzyme activities were observed, suggesting that reactive oxygen species play a less important role in bleaching under cold stress. These results confirmed the importance of resilience to cold stress in determining the distribution and northern limits of coral species, as cold events causing coral bleaching and high mortality occur regularly in temperate zones.

SUBMITTER: Higuchi T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4683436 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:In 2016, global temperatures were the highest on record, and mass coral bleaching occurred world-wide. However, around Sesoko Island, Okinawa, southwestern Japan, the heat stress assessed by degree heating week (DHW) based on local temperature measurements was moderate in 2016; in 1998, DHW was three times higher than in 2016 (10.6 vs. 3.3 in September in respective years). On a reef flat of Sesoko Island where the effect of severe coral bleaching on coral assemblage was monitored in 1998, significant coral bleaching occurred in 2016. Bleaching of the heat stress sensitive Acropora corals began in July 2016 on the reef flat as seawater temperature rose. We observed the bleaching and post-bleaching mortality status of individual colonies of Acropora spp. in 2016 in fixed plots on the reef flat. In total, 123 Acropora colonies were followed for six months after seawater temperature became normal by multiple surveys. At the beginning of September 2016, 99.2% of colonies, were either completely (92.7%) or partially (6.5%) bleached. Of those, the dominant species or species groups were A. gemmifera (Ag), A. digitifera (Ad), and tabular Acropora (tA). For all Acropora colonies, the overall whole and partial mortality was 41.5% and 11.4%, respectively. Whole mortality rate differed significantly among species; 72.5%, 17.9%, and 27.8% in Ag, Ad, and tA, respectively. Mortality rates at the end of the surveys were similar in smaller (?10 cm in diameter) and larger Ag, but the former suffered mortality earlier than the latter. Higher survival of smaller colonies was observed only in tA (100%), which may be associated with large morphological differences between smaller and larger colonies. Some of the dominant Acropora colonies had survived without partial mortality including 15.0% survival of the most vulnerable Ag at the end of the surveys. These results suggest that moderate heat stress may have a potential for selecting heat-tolerant genotypes. A longer period of mortality lasting for six months, was observed in Ag in addition to immediate whole mortality after bleaching, due to the continuous loss of living tissue by partial mortality. This highlights the need for multiple surveys at least during several months to accurately assess the impact of thermal stress event to corals. In contrast to DHW based on local measurements, DHW obtained from satellite data were similar between 1998 and 2016. Although satellite-based measurement of sea surface temperature is very useful to reveal variations in heat stress at a large spatial scale, temperature should be measured on site when variations at smaller spatial scales are of interest.

Dataset Information

The northern limit of corals of the genus Acropora in temperate zones is determined by their resilience to cold bleaching.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets