Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles
Relating Coral Skeletal Structures at Different Length Scales to Growth, Light Availability to Symbiodinium, and Thermal Bleaching
ORCID
0000-0002-6485-6823
ResearcherID
M-7702-2013
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Frontiers in Marine Science
ISSN
2296-7745
Publication Date
11-27-2018
Keywords
Coral bleaching, Light scattering, Light transport, Optical feedback-loop hypothesis, Skeletal growth model
Abstract
Light scattering of coral skeletons and tissues increases light availability to photosynthetic endosymbionts to form one of the most efficient biological collectors of solar radiation. Rapid increases in light availability during thermally-induced symbiont loss (bleaching) impair photosynthetic performance of the remaining Symbiodinium and precipitate a more severe bleaching response (optical feedback-loop hypothesis). Here we focus on light scattering of the skeleton, which is determined by light interaction with skeletal components assembled in a hierarchical fractal-like structure from tens of nanometers (e.g., calcium carbonate nanograins) to micro- and milli-meters (septa, corallites, and coenosteum) to centimeters and higher (colony form). We examined the association between skeletal structures, their role in light scattering, and species-specific bleaching responses for 88 coral species using phylogenetically-corrected analysis. We also explored the effect of growth on light scattering by modeling the fractal-like accretive growth of the skeleton (assuming a diffusion limited process of biomineralization) as a function of skeletal density, size of nanograins, fractal range of biomineralized clusters, and overall mass-fractal dimension, and validated the model with experimental data. Our results show that differences in light scattering from the top ~200 μm (micro-μs′) of the skeleton, and not from the whole skeleton (bulk-μs′), are related to bleaching susceptibility. We also demonstrate how differences in micro-μs′ of corallites and coenosteum could explain, in part, the heterogeneous light environment between polyp and coenosarc. The average effective light transport distance of coenosteum measured in 14 coral species indicates that coenosteum could transport light to the corallites, which could then function as “light-trapping devices” where photons are scattered multiple times by septa and corallite walls until absorbed by Symbiodinium. Furthermore, our fractal skeletal growth model suggests that corals that grow faster typically have lower mass-fractal dimension, denser skeletons, lower skeletal micro-μs′, and higher bleaching susceptibility. Finally, our results demonstrate that several skeletal structures of varying length scales known to modulate the light microenvironment of Symbiodinium in coral tissue are not associated with bleaching susceptibility. This work provides evidence of the relationship between skeletal growth, light scattering, and bleaching, and further supports the optical feedback-loop hypothesis of coral bleaching.
DOI
10.3389/fmars.2018.00450
Volume
5
Issue
450
First Page
1
Last Page
18
Additional Comments
NSF grant #s: EFRI-1240416, CBET-1249311; NIH grant #: EB 003682
NSUWorks Citation
Timothy D. Swain, Simon Lax, Natalie Lake, Hannah Grooms, Vadim Backman, and Luisa A. Marcelino. 2018. Relating Coral Skeletal Structures at Different Length Scales to Growth, Light Availability to Symbiodinium, and Thermal Bleaching .Frontiers in Marine Science , (450) : 1 -18. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_facarticles/1009.
Comments
©2018 Swain, Lax, Lake, Grooms, Backman and Marcelino. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.