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Temporal Variations in Metabolic and Autotrophic Indices for Acropora digitifera and Acropora spicifera – Implications for Monitoring Projects

Coral health indices are important components of the management assessments of coral reefs, providing insight into local variation in reef condition, as well as tools for comparisons between reefs and across various time scales. Understanding how such health indices vary in space and time is critica...

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Autores principales: Hinrichs, Saskia, Patten, Nicole L., Waite, Anya M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655939/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23696848
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0063693
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author Hinrichs, Saskia
Patten, Nicole L.
Waite, Anya M.
author_facet Hinrichs, Saskia
Patten, Nicole L.
Waite, Anya M.
author_sort Hinrichs, Saskia
collection PubMed
description Coral health indices are important components of the management assessments of coral reefs, providing insight into local variation in reef condition, as well as tools for comparisons between reefs and across various time scales. Understanding how such health indices vary in space and time is critical to their successful implementation as management tools. Here we compare autotrophic and heterotrophic coral health indices, examining specifically the temporal variation driven by the local environmental variation, at three scales (diel, daily and seasonal). We compared metabolic indices (RNA/DNA ratio, protein concentration) and autotrophic indices (Chlorophyll a (Chl a), zooxanthellae density, effective quantum yield (yield) and relative electron transport rate (rETR)) for two dominant Acropora species, A. digitifera and A. spicifera at Ningaloo Reef (north-western Australia) in August 2010 (austral winter) and February 2011 (austral summer). Clear seasonal patterns were documented for metabolic indices, zooxanthellae density and rETR, while cyclic diel patterns only occurred for yield and rETR, and RNA/DNA ratio. Significant daily variation was observed for RNA/DNA ratio, Chl a concentration, yield and rETR. Results suggest that zooxanthellae density and protein concentrations are good long-term indicators of coral health whose variance is largely seasonal, while RNA/DNA ratio and rETR can be used for both long-term (seasonal) and short-term (diel) coral monitoring. Chl a can be used to describe changes between days and yield for both diel and daily variations. Correlations between health indices and light history showed that short-term changes in irradiance had the strongest impact on all health indices except zooxanthellae density for A. digitifera; for A. spicifera no correlation was observed at all. However, cumulative irradiance over the several days before sampling showed significant correlations with most health indices suggesting that a time-lag effect has to be taken into account when interpreting diel variations in coral condition.
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spelling pubmed-36559392013-05-21 Temporal Variations in Metabolic and Autotrophic Indices for Acropora digitifera and Acropora spicifera – Implications for Monitoring Projects Hinrichs, Saskia Patten, Nicole L. Waite, Anya M. PLoS One Research Article Coral health indices are important components of the management assessments of coral reefs, providing insight into local variation in reef condition, as well as tools for comparisons between reefs and across various time scales. Understanding how such health indices vary in space and time is critical to their successful implementation as management tools. Here we compare autotrophic and heterotrophic coral health indices, examining specifically the temporal variation driven by the local environmental variation, at three scales (diel, daily and seasonal). We compared metabolic indices (RNA/DNA ratio, protein concentration) and autotrophic indices (Chlorophyll a (Chl a), zooxanthellae density, effective quantum yield (yield) and relative electron transport rate (rETR)) for two dominant Acropora species, A. digitifera and A. spicifera at Ningaloo Reef (north-western Australia) in August 2010 (austral winter) and February 2011 (austral summer). Clear seasonal patterns were documented for metabolic indices, zooxanthellae density and rETR, while cyclic diel patterns only occurred for yield and rETR, and RNA/DNA ratio. Significant daily variation was observed for RNA/DNA ratio, Chl a concentration, yield and rETR. Results suggest that zooxanthellae density and protein concentrations are good long-term indicators of coral health whose variance is largely seasonal, while RNA/DNA ratio and rETR can be used for both long-term (seasonal) and short-term (diel) coral monitoring. Chl a can be used to describe changes between days and yield for both diel and daily variations. Correlations between health indices and light history showed that short-term changes in irradiance had the strongest impact on all health indices except zooxanthellae density for A. digitifera; for A. spicifera no correlation was observed at all. However, cumulative irradiance over the several days before sampling showed significant correlations with most health indices suggesting that a time-lag effect has to be taken into account when interpreting diel variations in coral condition. Public Library of Science 2013-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC3655939/ /pubmed/23696848 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0063693 Text en © 2013 Hinrichs et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Hinrichs, Saskia
Patten, Nicole L.
Waite, Anya M.
Temporal Variations in Metabolic and Autotrophic Indices for Acropora digitifera and Acropora spicifera – Implications for Monitoring Projects
title Temporal Variations in Metabolic and Autotrophic Indices for Acropora digitifera and Acropora spicifera – Implications for Monitoring Projects
title_full Temporal Variations in Metabolic and Autotrophic Indices for Acropora digitifera and Acropora spicifera – Implications for Monitoring Projects
title_fullStr Temporal Variations in Metabolic and Autotrophic Indices for Acropora digitifera and Acropora spicifera – Implications for Monitoring Projects
title_full_unstemmed Temporal Variations in Metabolic and Autotrophic Indices for Acropora digitifera and Acropora spicifera – Implications for Monitoring Projects
title_short Temporal Variations in Metabolic and Autotrophic Indices for Acropora digitifera and Acropora spicifera – Implications for Monitoring Projects
title_sort temporal variations in metabolic and autotrophic indices for acropora digitifera and acropora spicifera – implications for monitoring projects
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655939/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23696848
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0063693
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