Carbon Isotopic Fractionation in Organic Matter Production Consistent With Benthic Community Composition Across a Coral Reef Flat

Carbon fluxes on coral reefs (net community production and net community calcification) aggregate the collective activity of all coral reef community members. This integrated approach provides powerful community-level insights, but is unable to resolve the finer-scale contributions of different reef functional groups to the community-scale rates. Tools are required to disaggregate the community-scale approaches and evaluate the performance of co-existing reef functional groups. Such assessments are necessary to improve forecasts of coral reef responses to global and local environmental change. We present results from a coral reef field study on One Tree Island reef in the Great Barrier Reef, off northeastern Australia, in September-October 2016 where we combined observations of total alkalinity, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), and the stable isotopic composition of dissolved inorganic carbon (δ13CDIC) to estimate carbon isotopic fractionation during organic matter formation. Portions of the reef with greater abundance of non-calcifying algae fractionated DIC ~5‰ more (stronger preference for 12C) during organic metabolism than did portions of the reef with a greater abundance of calcifiers. These results were consistent across a wide range of assumed isotopic fractionation factors for net calcification. We attribute the observed differences in carbon isotopic fractionation to the metabolic activities of the ecological community underlying each section of the reef, rather than to environmental factors such as light availability or water temperature. The patterns in carbon isotopic fractionation were generally consistent with inferred ratios of calcification to primary production in each reef zone, giving further confidence to our inference that differences in carbon isotopic fractionation may be related to differences in the ecological community on small spatial scales

Upwelling-Level Acidification and pH/pCO2 Variability Moderate Effects of Ocean Acidification on Brain Gene Expression in the Temperate Surfperch, Embiotoca jacksoni

Acidification-induced changes in neurological function have been documented in several tropical marine fishes. Here, we investigate whether similar patterns of neurological impacts are observed in a temperate Pacific fish that naturally experiences regular and often large shifts in environmental pH/pCO2. In two laboratory experiments, we tested the effect of acidification, as well as pH/pCO2 variability, on gene expression in the brain tissue of a common temperate kelp forest/estuarine fish, Embiotoca jacksoni. Experiment 1 employed static pH treatments (target pH = 7.85/7.30), while Experiment 2 incorporated two variable treatments that oscillated around corresponding static treatments with the same mean (target pH = 7.85/7.70) in an eight-day cycle (amplitude ± 0.15). We found that patterns of global gene expression differed across pH level treatments. Additionally, we identified differential expression of specific genes and enrichment of specific gene sets (GSEA) in comparisons of static pH treatments and in comparisons of static and variable pH treatments of the same mean pH. Importantly, we found that pH/pCO2 variability decreased the number of differentially expressed genes detected between high and low pH treatments, and that interindividual variability in gene expression was greater in variable treatments than static treatments. These results provide important confirmation of neurological impacts of acidification in a temperate fish species and, critically, that natural environmental variability may mediate the impacts of ocean acidification

Structural basis for the membrane association of ankyrinG via palmitoylation

Fujiwara, Y., Kondo, H., Shirota, M. et al. Structural basis for the membrane association of ankyrinG via palmitoylation. Sci Rep 6, 23981 (2016) doi:10.1038/srep2398

Autonomous in situ calibration of ion‐sensitive field effect transistor pH sensors

Ion‐sensitive field effect transistor‐based pH sensors have been shown to perform well in high frequency and long‐term ocean sampling regimes. The Honeywell Durafet is widely used due to its stability, fast response, and characterization over a large range of oceanic conditions. However, potentiometric pH monitoring is inherently complicated by the fact that the sensors require careful calibration. Offsets in calibration coefficients have been observed when comparing laboratory to field‐based calibrations and prior work has led to the recommendation that an in situ calibration be performed based on comparison to discrete samples. Here, we describe our work toward a self‐calibration apparatus integrated into a SeapHOx pH, dissolved oxygen, and CTD sensor package. This Self‐Calibrating SeapHOx is capable of autonomously recording calibration values from a high quality, traceable, primary reference standard: equimolar tris buffer. The Self‐Calibrating SeapHOx\u27s functionality was demonstrated in a 6‐d test in a seawater tank at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (La Jolla, California, U.S.A.) and was successfully deployed for 2 weeks on a shallow, coral reef flat (Lizard Island, Australia). During the latter deployment, the tris‐based self‐calibration using 15 on‐board samples exhibited superior reproducibility to the standard spectrophotometric pH‐based calibration using \u3e 100 discrete samples. Standard deviations of calibration pH using tris ranged from 0.002 to 0.005 whereas they ranged from 0.006 to 0.009 for the standard spectrophotometric pH‐based method; the two independent calibration methods resulted in a mean pH difference of 0.008. We anticipate that the Self‐Calibrating SeapHOx will be capable of autonomously providing climate quality pH data, directly linked to a primary seawater pH standard, and with improvements over standard calibration techniques

Unexpected role of communities colonizing dead coral substrate in the calcification of coral reefs

Global and local anthropogenic stressors such as climate change, acidification, overfishing, and pollution are expected to shift the benthic community composition of coral reefs from dominance by calcifying organisms to dominance by non-calcifying algae. These changes could reduce the ability of coral reef ecosystems to maintain positive net calcium carbonate accretion. However, relationships between community composition and calcification rates remain unclear. We performed field experiments to quantify the metabolic rates of the two most dominant coral reef substrate types, live coral and dead coral substrate colonized by a mixed algal assemblage, using a novel underwater respirometer. Our results revealed that calcification rates in the daytime were similar for the live coral and dead coral substrate communities. However, in the dark, while live corals continued to calcify at slower rates, the dead coral substrate communities exhibited carbonate dissolution. Daytime net photosynthesis of the dead coral substrate communities was up to five times as much as for live corals, which we hypothesize may have created favorable conditions for the precipitation of carbonate minerals. We conclude that: (1) calcification from dead coral substrate communities can contribute to coral reef community calcification during the day, and (2) dead coral substrate communities can also contribute to carbonate mineral dissolution at night, decreasing ecosystem calcification over a diel cycle. This provides evidence that reefs could shift from slow, long-term accretion of calcium carbonate to a state where large daily cycling of calcium carbonate occurs, but with little or no long-term accumulation of the carbonate minerals needed to sustain the reef against erosional forces

New and Updated Global Empirical Seawater Property Estimation Routines

We introduce three new Empirical Seawater Property Estimation Routines (ESPERs) capable of predicting seawater phosphate, nitrate, silicate, oxygen, total titration seawater alkalinity, total hydrogen scale pH (pHT), and total dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) from up to 16 combinations of seawater property measurements. The routines generate estimates from neural networks (ESPER_NN), locally interpolated regressions (ESPER_LIR), or both (ESPER_Mixed). They require a salinity value and coordinate information, and benefit from additional seawater measurements if available. These routines are intended for seawater property measurement quality control and quality assessment, generating estimates for calculations that require approximate values, original science, and producing biogeochemical property context from a data set. Relative to earlier LIR routines, the updates expand their functionality, including new estimated properties and combinations of predictors, a larger training data product including new cruises from the 2020 Global Data Analysis Project data product release, and the implementation of a first-principles approach for quantifying the impacts of anthropogenic carbon on DIC and pHT. We show that the new routines perform at least as well as existing routines, and, in some cases, outperform existing approaches, even when limited to the same training data. Given that additional training data has been incorporated into these updated routines, these updates should be considered an improvement over earlier versions. The routines are intended for all ocean depths for the interval from 1980 to ~2030 c.e., and we caution against using the routines to directly quantify surface ocean seasonality or make more distant predictions of DIC or pHT.1,82

Expected Limits on the Ocean Acidification Buffering Potential of a Temperate Seagrass Meadow

Ocean acidification threatens many marine organisms, especially marine calcifiers. The only global‐scale solution to ocean acidification remains rapid reduction in CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, interest in localized mitigation strategies has grown rapidly because of the recognized threat ocean acidification imposes on natural communities, including ones important to humans. Protection of seagrass meadows has been considered as a possible approach for localized mitigation of ocean acidification due to their large standing stocks of organic carbon and high productivity. Yet much work remains to constrain the magnitudes and timescales of potential buffering effects from seagrasses. We developed a biogeochemical box model to better understand the potential for a temperate seagrass meadow to locally mitigate the effects of ocean acidification. Then we parameterized the model using data from Tomales Bay, an inlet on the coast of California, USA which supports a major oyster farming industry. We conducted a series of month‐long model simulations to characterize processes that occur during summer and winter. We found that average pH in the seagrass meadows was typically within 0.04 units of the pH of the primary source waters into the meadow, although we did find occasional periods (hours) when seagrass metabolism may modify the pH by up to ±0.2 units. Tidal phasing relative to the diel cycle modulates localized pH buffering within the seagrass meadow such that maximum buffering occurs during periods of the year with midday low tides. Our model results suggest that seagrass metabolism in Tomales Bay would not provide long‐term ocean acidification mitigation. However, we emphasize that our model results may not hold in meadows where assumptions about depth‐averaged net production and seawater residence time within the seagrass meadow differ from our model assumptions. Our modeling approach provides a framework that is easily adaptable to other seagrass meadows in order to evaluate the extent of their individual buffering capacities. Regardless of their ability to buffer ocean acidification, seagrass meadows maintain many critically important ecosystem goods and services that will be increasingly important as humans increasingly affect coastal ecosystems

Diel Temperature and pH Variability Scale With Depth Across Diverse Coral Reef Habitats

Coral reefs are facing intensifying stressors, largely due to global increases in seawater temperature and decreases in pH. However, there is extensive environmental variability within coral reef ecosystems, which can impact how organisms respond to global trends. We deployed spatial arrays of autonomous sensors across distinct shallow coral reef habitats to determine patterns of spatiotemporal variability in seawater physicochemical parameters. Temperature and pH were positively correlated over the course of a day due to solar heating and light‐driven metabolism. The mean temporal and spatial ranges of temperature and pH were positively correlated across all sites, with different regimes of variability observed in different reef types. Ultimately, depth was a reliable predictor of the average diel ranges in both seawater temperature and pH. These results demonstrate that there is widespread environmental variability on diel timescales within coral reefs related to water column depth, which needs to be included in assessments of how global change will locally affect reef ecosystems

The challenges of detecting and attributing ocean acidification impacts on marine ecosystems

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Doo, S. S., Kealoha, A., Andersson, A., Cohen, A. L., Hicks, T. L., Johnson, Z., I., Long, M. H., McElhany, P., Mollica, N., Shamberger, K. E. F., Silbiger, N. J., Takeshita, Y., & Busch, D. S. The challenges of detecting and attributing ocean acidification impacts on marine ecosystems. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 77(7-8), (2020): 2411-2422, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsaa094.A substantial body of research now exists demonstrating sensitivities of marine organisms to ocean acidification (OA) in laboratory settings. However, corresponding in situ observations of marine species or ecosystem changes that can be unequivocally attributed to anthropogenic OA are limited. Challenges remain in detecting and attributing OA effects in nature, in part because multiple environmental changes are co-occurring with OA, all of which have the potential to influence marine ecosystem responses. Furthermore, the change in ocean pH since the industrial revolution is small relative to the natural variability within many systems, making it difficult to detect, and in some cases, has yet to cross physiological thresholds. The small number of studies that clearly document OA impacts in nature cannot be interpreted as a lack of larger-scale attributable impacts at the present time or in the future but highlights the need for innovative research approaches and analyses. We summarize the general findings in four relatively well-studied marine groups (seagrasses, pteropods, oysters, and coral reefs) and integrate overarching themes to highlight the challenges involved in detecting and attributing the effects of OA in natural environments. We then discuss four potential strategies to better evaluate and attribute OA impacts on species and ecosystems. First, we highlight the need for work quantifying the anthropogenic input of CO2 in coastal and open-ocean waters to understand how this increase in CO2 interacts with other physical and chemical factors to drive organismal conditions. Second, understanding OA-induced changes in population-level demography, potentially increased sensitivities in certain life stages, and how these effects scale to ecosystem-level processes (e.g. community metabolism) will improve our ability to attribute impacts to OA among co-varying parameters. Third, there is a great need to understand the potential modulation of OA impacts through the interplay of ecology and evolution (eco–evo dynamics). Lastly, further research efforts designed to detect, quantify, and project the effects of OA on marine organisms and ecosystems utilizing a comparative approach with long-term data sets will also provide critical information for informing the management of marine ecosystems.SSD was funded by NSF OCE (grant # 1415268). DSB and PM were supported by the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program and Northwest Fisheries Science Center, MHL was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1633951), ZIJ was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1416665) and DOE EERE (grant #DE-EE008518), NJS was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1924281), ALC was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1737311), and AA was supported by NSF OCE (grant # 1416518). KEFS, AK, and TLH were supported by Texas A&M University. This is CSUN Marine Biology contribution (# 306)

Hydrostatic pressure effects on superconducting transition of nanostructured niobium highly strained by high-pressure torsion

We study the effects of hydrostatic pressure (HP) compression on the superconducting transition of severely strained Nb samples, whose grain sizes are reduced to the submicrometer level. Engineered granularity by high-pressure torsion (HPT) treatment changes the strength of coupling between submicrometer-scale grains and introduces lattice strain. We attempt to utilize the initially accumulated shear strain in the starting material for increasing the superconducting transition temperature Tc under HP compression. The HP effects on non-strained Nb have already been investigated in the pressure regime over 100 GPa by Struzhkin et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 4262 (1997)], and Tc reportedly exhibited an increase from 9.2 to 9.9 K at approximately 10 GPa. (1) Slightly strained Nb in the HPT treatment exhibits the increase in Tc under HP due to the strengthening of the intergrain coupling, so the pressure scale of the pressure response observed by Struzhkin et al. is reduced to approximately one-seventh at the maximum. (2) Prominently strained Nb in the HPT treatment exhibits the increase in Tc under HP due to a reduction in structural symmetry at the unit-cell level: In a Nb sample subjected to HPT (6 GPa, 10 revolutions), Tc exceeds 9.9 K at approximately 2 GPa. According to our first-principle calculations, the reduction in the structural symmetry affords an increase in the density of states at the Fermi energy, thereby yielding a prominent increase in Tc at low pressures