Colonies of Acropora formosa with greater survival show conserved calcification rates

Abstract

Coral reefs are facing increasingly devasting impacts from ocean warming and acidification due to anthropogenic climate change. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, potential solutions have focused either on reducing light stress during heating, or the potential for identifying or engineering "super corals". These studies, however, have tended to focus primarily on the bleaching response of corals, and assume that corals that bleach earlier in a thermal event are more likely to die. Here, we explore how survival, potential bleaching, and coral skeletal growth (as branch extension and densification) varies for conspecifics collected from distinctive reef zones at Heron Island on the Southern Great Barrier Reef. A series of reciprocal transplantation experiments were undertaken using the dominant reef building coral (Acropora formosa) between the highly variable reef flat and the less variable reef slope environments. Coral colonies originating from the reef flat had higher rates of survival and thicker tissues but reduced rates of calcification than conspecifics originating from the reef slope. The energetics of both populations however benefited from greater light intensity offered in the shallows. Reef flat origin corals moved to the lower light intensity of reef slope reduced protein density and calcification rates. For A. formosa, genetic difference, or long-term entrainment to a highly variable environment, appeared to promote coral survival at the expense of calcification. The response divorces coral resilience from carbonate coral reef resilience, a response that was further exacerbated by reductions in irradiance. As we begin to discuss interventions necessitated by the CO2 that has already been released to the atmosphere, we need to prioritise our focus on the properties that maintain valuable carbonate ecosystems. Rapid and dense calcification by corals such as branching Acropora is essential to the ability of carbonate coral reefs to rebound following disturbances events, but may be the first property that is sacrificed to enable coral genet survival under stress.