Coral bioerosion by the sea urchin Diadema setosum in Hong Kong: Susceptibility of different coral species

Dumont, Clément P.; Lau, Dickey C.C.; Astudillo, Juan C.; Fong, Kin Fung; Chak, Solomon T. C.; Qiu, Jian‐Wen

doi:10.1016/j.jembe.2013.01.018

Cited by 47 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Although a transcriptome of P. carnosa from Hong Kong is already available [21], its completeness is quite low, with only 73.42% complete BUSCOs (Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs). In recent years, the health of some of these coral species has been affected by various stressors including excessive bioerosion [22–24], skeletal growth anomalies [25], bleaching [26], and recreational activities [27, 28]. To facilitate easy access to the transcriptome data, we constructed a relational database with a user-friendly Internet interface.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a transcriptomic database for 14 species of scleractinian corals

et al. 2019

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Background Scleractinian corals are important reef builders, but around the world they are under the threat of global climate change as well as local stressors. Molecular resources are critical for understanding a species’ stress responses and resilience to the changing environment, but such resources are unavailable for most scleractinian corals, especially those distributed in the South China Sea. We therefore aimed to provide transcriptome resources for 14 common species, including a few structure forming species, in the South China Sea. Description We sequenced the transcriptome of 14 species of scleractinian corals using high-throughput RNA-seq and conducted de novo assembly. For each species, we produced 7.4 to 12.0 gigabases of reads, and assembled them into 271 to 762 thousand contigs with a N50 value of 629 to 1427 bp. These contigs included 66 to 114 thousand unigenes with a predicted open reading frame, and 74.3 to 80.5% of the unigenes were functionally annotated. In the azooxanthelate species Tubastraea coccinea , 41.5% of the unigenes had at least a best-hit sequence from corals. In the other thirteen species, 20.2 to 48.9% of the annotated unigenes had best-hit sequences from corals, and 28.3 to 51.6% from symbiotic algae belonging to the family Symbiodinaceae . With these resources, we developed a transcriptome database (CoralTBase) which features online BLAST and keyword search for unigenes/functional terms through a user friendly Internet interface. Short conclusion We developed comprehensive transcriptome resources for 14 species of scleractinian corals and constructed a publicly accessible database ( www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/~db/CoralTBase ). CoralTBase will facilitate not only functional studies using these corals to understand the molecular basis of stress responses and adaptation, but also comparative transcriptomic studies with other species of corals and more distantly related cnidarians. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12864-019-5744-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a transcriptomic database for 14 species of scleractinian corals

et al. 2019

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“…Yet, in Hong Kong, macroalgal abundance varies seasonally, growing during the winter, when coral productivity is low, and it vanishes entirely during the summer in response to the rapid increase in temperature and herbivory (Hodgkiss, 1984;Ang, 2006). At all times, high herbivore densities (particularly sea urchins) prevent any sustained macroalgae growth (Dumont et al, 2013). Although eutrophication has been shown to significantly increase the occurrence of coral disease (Vega Thurber et al, 2014;Wear & Thurber, 2015), the abundant literature on local coral communities does not report any observations of coral disease outbreak, although growth abnormalities are commonly observed (Morton, 1994;McCorry, 2002;Ang et al, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reefs of tomorrow: eutrophication reduces coral biodiversity in an urbanized seascape

Duprey

Yasuhara

Baker

2016

Global Change Biology

131

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Although the impacts of nutrient pollution on coral reefs are well known, surprisingly, no statistical relationships have ever been established between water quality parameters, coral biodiversity and coral cover. Hong Kong provides a unique opportunity to assess this relationship. Here, coastal waters have been monitored monthly since 1986, at 76 stations, providing a highly spatially resolved water quality dataset including 68 903 data points. Moreover, a robust coral species richness (S) dataset is available from more than 100 surveyed locations, composed of 3453 individual colonies' observations, as well as a coral cover (CC) dataset including 85 sites. This wealth of data provides a unique opportunity to test the hypothesis that water quality, and in particular nutrients, drives coral biodiversity. The influence of water quality on S and CC was analyzed using GIS and multiple regression modeling. Eutrophication (as chlorophyll‐a concentration; CHLA) was negatively correlated with S and CC, whereas physicochemical parameters (DO and salinity) had no significant effect. The modeling further illustrated that particulate suspended matter, dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP) had a negative effect on S and on CC; however, the effect of nutrients was 1.5‐fold to twofold greater. The highest S and CC occurred where CHLA <2 μg L−1, DIN < 2 μm and DIP < 0.1 μm. Where these values were exceeded, S and CC were significantly lower and no live corals were observed where CHLA > 15 μg L−1, DIN > 9 μm and DIP > 0.33 μm. This study demonstrates the importance of nutrients over other water quality parameters in coral biodiversity loss and highlights the key role of eutrophication in shaping coastal coral reef ecosystems. This work also provides ecological thresholds that may be useful for water quality guidelines and nutrient mitigation policies.

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“…For example, in prior studies, imaging methodologies in 2-dimensions (e.g., [ 21 – 23 ]) and, more recently, 3-dimensions (CT and μ CT) [ 3 , 20 , 24 ] have been applied to slabs or cores of reef to separate accretion and bioerosion ( Table 1 ), but rates are difficult to estimate because the time the substrate became available to bioeroders and secondary calcifiers is unknown. Pre- and post-deployment buoyant weight [ 6 , 8 ], volume [ 25 ], and mass [ 26 – 28 ] calculations on experimental substrates ( Table 1 ) confound secondary accretion and bioerosion processes, but have a known deployment period and thus can be used to calculate a rate. Before and after μ CT scans can calculate net erosion and secondary accretion rates on experimental substrates [ 4 ], but also confound accretion and erosion processes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Novel μCT Analysis Reveals Different Responses of Bioerosion and Secondary Accretion to Environmental Variability

et al. 2016

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Corals build reefs through accretion of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) skeletons, but net reef growth also depends on bioerosion by grazers and borers and on secondary calcification by crustose coralline algae and other calcifying invertebrates. However, traditional field methods for quantifying secondary accretion and bioerosion confound both processes, do not measure them on the same time-scale, or are restricted to 2D methods. In a prior study, we compared multiple environmental drivers of net erosion using pre- and post-deployment micro-computed tomography scans (μCT; calculated as the % change in volume of experimental CaCO3 blocks) and found a shift from net accretion to net erosion with increasing ocean acidity. Here, we present a novel μCT method and detail a procedure that aligns and digitally subtracts pre- and post-deployment μCT scans and measures the simultaneous response of secondary accretion and bioerosion on blocks exposed to the same environmental variation over the same time-scale. We tested our method on a dataset from a prior study and show that it can be used to uncover information previously unattainable using traditional methods. We demonstrated that secondary accretion and bioerosion are driven by different environmental parameters, bioerosion is more sensitive to ocean acidity than secondary accretion, and net erosion is driven more by changes in bioerosion than secondary accretion.

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Coral bioerosion by the sea urchin Diadema setosum in Hong Kong: Susceptibility of different coral species

Cited by 47 publications

References 21 publications

Development of a transcriptomic database for 14 species of scleractinian corals

Development of a transcriptomic database for 14 species of scleractinian corals

Reefs of tomorrow: eutrophication reduces coral biodiversity in an urbanized seascape

A Novel μCT Analysis Reveals Different Responses of Bioerosion and Secondary Accretion to Environmental Variability

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