Effect of feeding on the carbon and oxygen isotopic composition in the tissues and skeleton of the zooxanthellate coral Stylophora pistillata

By S. Reynaud, C. Ferrier‐Pagès, R. Sambrotto, A. Juillet‐Leclerc, J. Jaubert, Jean-Pierre Gattuso. 2002

90 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The effect of feeding on the carbon isotopic composition of zooxanthellae, animal tissue and skeleton was investigated in the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata. Two sets of corals were grown with filtered seawater under controlled conditions. One group of colonies was fed Artemia sp. nauplii and compared to a control group that was starved. Fed corals exhibited higher concentrations of chlorophyll (60% more), soluble protein (4 times more) and calcification rates (29% more) than starved colonies. The net photosynthetic rate was higher in starved than in fed corals (18.53 ± 6.99 and 6.78 ± 2.06 µmol O2 cm -2 h -1 respectively), whereas dark respiration was not significantly different (8.74 ± 2.27 and 6.66 ± 0.40 µmol O2 cm -2 h -1 ). The average δ 13 C value of Artemia sp. nauplii used for feeding was -12‰. δ 13 C was significantly heavier in zooxanthellae than in animal tissues, for both fed (-10.1 vs -11.7‰) and starved colonies (-10.9 vs -13.2‰). Artemia sp. carbon was incorporated into the coral tissue as shown by the heavier δ 13 C in fed than in starved colonies (-11.7 to -13.2‰, respec- tively), although there was no difference in the δ 13 C of the zooxanthellae fraction. Skeletal δ 13 C was similar in fed and starved colonies (mean -4.6‰). Skeletal δ 18 O composition was, however, signifi- cantly different between the 2 treatments (-4.24 to -4.05‰ for fed and starved colonies, respectively), which may have been due to differences in the calcification rates of fed and starved corals. These data are used to establish a conceptual model of the carbon flow between the various compartments of a symbiotic coral. It suggests that the skeletal δ 13 C is not sensitive to heterotrophic food supply.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a1b06fc8d6bd9b5d1fa7cd95b39003af42b5106a

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Citations in the corpus

Long-term growth rates of four Mediterranean cold-water coral species maintained in aquaria (2011, background): “1c) and lives between 100 and 4000 m depth (Risk et al. 2002).”
Lipids and stable carbon isotopes in two species of Hawaiian corals, Porites compressa and Montipora verrucosa, following a bleaching event (2004, background): “The difference in d13C values between the host tissue and algal symbiont fractions is diagnostic of the relative contribution of heterotrophically acquired fixed carbon and photosynthetically fixed carbon to the coral (Muscatine et al. 1989; Risk et al. 1994; Reynaud et al. 2002).”
Sub-equilibrium oxygen-18 and carbon-13 levels in biological carbonates: carbonate and kinetic models (2003, background): “Increased feeding can slightly increase, decrease, or have little effect on skeletal d13C in reef corals (Grottoli and Wellington 1999; Grottoli 2002; Reynaud et al. 2002).”
Summer autotrophy and winter heterotrophy in the temperate symbiotic coral Cladocora caespitosa (2011, background): “Indeed, the zooxanthellae signature was significantly higher than those of the POM, SOM, and zooplankton, because of their intense photosynthetic activity of the zooxanthellae and partly because of the use of bicarbonate with a high d13C signature (0.8%; Reynaud et al. 2002).”