Ocean acidification affects coral growth by reducing skeletal density

2018/01/29 by Nathaniel R. Mollica, Weifu Guo, Anne L. Cohen +4 · 1 citation
Environmental Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies #Ocean Acidification Effects and Responses #Marine and coastal plant biology

paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.1712806115

openalex publication_date 2018/01/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

Significance Ocean acidification (OA) threatens coral reef futures by reducing the concentration of carbonate ions that corals need to construct their skeletons. However, quantitative predictions of reef futures under OA are confounded by mixed responses of corals to OA in experiments and field observations. We modeled the skeletal growth of a dominant reef-building coral, Porites , as a function of seawater chemistry and validated the model against observational data. We show that OA directly and negatively affects one component of the two-step growth process (density) but not the other (linear extension). Combining our growth model with Global Climate Model output, we show that skeletal density of Porites corals could decline by up to 20.3% over the 21st century solely due to OA.

Citations

• Coral biomineralization: From the gene to the environment
• Large-scale stress factors affecting coral reefs: open ocean sea surface temperature and surface seawater aragonite saturation over the next 400 years
• Photosynthesis and Calcification at Cellular, Organismal and Community Levels in Coral Reefs: A Review on Interactions and Control by Carbonate Chemistry
• Losers and winners in coral reefs acclimatized to elevated carbon dioxide concentrations
• Ocean Acidification: The Other CO2Problem

Cited by

• Ocean acidification [wikipedia]

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