March 26,
2019, University
of Queensland
Warming
coral reefs are losing their capacity to feed themselves from sunlight, making
nutritious deep ocean water critical for their survival, according to a
University of Queensland study.
UQ Ph.D.
candidate Veronica Radice analysed coral samples from the Maldives
to find out what corals were feeding on in a remote atoll system.
"Corals
depend on different sources of nutrition including sunlight and nutrients in
the water," she said.
"What
many people don't realise is that corals have algae living in their tissue,
which allows them to photosynthesise sunlight, giving the coral some plant-like
properties.
"However, ocean warming due
to climate
change is causing these corals to be stressed, which makes them
lose this nutritional source from their symbiotic algae.
"So
we thought it was important to see what other food sources corals were relying
on."
Ms Radice
and her colleagues collected fragments of three species of coral from reefs at
10 metres and 30 metres depths in the Maldives.
"We
separated the tissue of the symbiotic algae from its coral host tissue, and
samples were then prepared for isotopic analysis," she said.
"This
allowed us to break apart a coral's diet and nutrients, looking at the ratios
of different isotopes – for example, carbon or nitrogen – giving us clues to
where these nutrients might come from."
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