{"id":7260,"date":"2012-08-25T18:07:50","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T08:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/?p=7260"},"modified":"2012-08-25T18:07:50","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T08:07:50","slug":"corals-can-suffer-from-nutrient-imbalance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/nature\/corals-can-suffer-from-nutrient-imbalance\/","title":{"rendered":"Corals can suffer from nutrient imbalance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_7261\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 605px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7261\" title=\"coral-bleached\" src=\"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/coral-bleached.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"605\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/coral-bleached.gif 605w, https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/coral-bleached-300x185.gif 300w, https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/coral-bleached-250x154.gif 250w, https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/coral-bleached-119x74.gif 119w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 605px) 100vw, 605px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Light and temperature trigger the loss of symbiotic algae (bleaching) in a nutrient-stressed staghorn coral. Image: University of Southampton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Improving water quality could help save coral reefs.<!--more--><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Coral polyps and their associated zooxanthellae depend on each other for survival- the coral provides shelter and nutrients, while the single-celled algae provide the corals with an energy source through photosynthesis. However, high temperatures can threaten this relationship by blocking photosynthetic reactions in the algal cells. This causes a build-up of toxic oxygen compounds, resulting in the expulsion of the algae from their calcareous home and bleaching of the polyps.<\/p>\n<p>Bleaching usually leads to coral death, which has already had devastating effects on coral reef ecosystems. Now scientists from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/\">University of Southampton<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.noc.soton.ac.uk\/\">National Oceanography Centre, Southampton,<\/a> in the UK have found that nutrient imbalances in the water can increase the corals&#8217; susceptibility to heat-induced bleaching.<\/p>\n<p>The growth rate of the zooxanthellae is restricted by the limited supply of nutrients, allowing them to transfer a large amount of their photosynthetically fixed carbon to the coral. This growth becomes unbalanced when the availability of a specific nutrient decreases compared to the algae&#8217;s demand, causing starvation. For example a decrease in phosphate, when combined with increased nitrogen, results in phosphorous starvation.<\/p>\n<p>This condition is associated with a reduction in photosynthetic efficiency and increases the susceptibility of corals to temperature- and light-induced bleaching. &#8220;The findings suggest that a balanced reduction of the nutrient input in coastal waters could help to mitigate the effects of increasing seawater temperatures on coral reefs,&#8221; says Dr J\u00c3\u00b6rg Wiedenmann, who led the study published in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/\">Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/pub_releases\/2012-08\/uos-iwq081612.php\">Eurekalert<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Improving water quality could help save coral reefs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,98,101,84,56,64,45,32,6,8],"tags":[856,853,290,223,74],"class_list":["post-7260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animals","category-biology","category-bulls-eye","category-climate","category-conservation","category-ecology","category-environment","category-marine-biology","category-nature","category-science","tag-bulls-eye","tag-conservation","tag-coral-bleaching","tag-marine-biology-2","tag-science-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7260"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7382,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7260\/revisions\/7382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}