Physiological acclimation to elevated temperature in a reef-building coral from an upwelling environment

• Published in: Coral reefs 2013-12, Vol.32 (4), p.909-921
• Main Authors: Mayfield, A. B., Fan, T.-Y., Chen, C.-S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acclimatization; Animal and plant ecology; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Biological and medical sciences; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Bleaching; Climate change; Conspecifics; Coral reefs; Freshwater & Marine Ecology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Gene expression; Global climate; High temperature; Life Sciences; Marine biology; Marine ecology; Mortality; Ocean temperature; Oceanography; Pocillopora damicornis; Sea water ecosystems; Symbiodinium; Symbiosis; Synecology; Upwelling
• ISSN: 0722-4028; 1432-0975
• DOI: 10.1007/s00338-013-1067-4

Recent work has found that pocilloporid corals from regions characterized by unstable temperatures, such as those exposed to periodic upwelling, display a remarkable degree of phenotypic plasticity. In order to understand whether important reef builders from these upwelling reefs remain physiologically uncompromised at temperatures they will experience in the coming decades as a result of global climate change, a long-term elevated temperature experiment was conducted with Pocillopora damicornis specimens collected from Houbihu, a small embayment within Nanwan Bay, southern Taiwan that is characterized by 8–9 °C temperature changes during upwelling events. Upon nine months of exposure to nearly 30 °C, all colony (mortality and surface area), polyp ( Symbiodinium density and chlorophyll a content), tissue (total thickness), and molecular (gene expression and molecular composition)-level parameters were documented at similar levels between experimental corals and controls incubated at 26.5 °C, suggesting that this species can readily acclimate to elevated temperatures that cause significant degrees of stress, or even bleaching and mortality, in conspecifics of other regions of the Indo-Pacific. However, the gastrodermal tissue layer was relatively thicker in corals of the high temperature treatment sampled after nine months, possibly as an adaptive response to shade Symbiodinium from the higher photosynthetically active radiation levels that they were experiencing at that sampling time. Such shading may have prevented high light and high temperature-induced photoinhibition, and consequent bleaching, in these samples.