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Symbiosis

Making light work of adaptation

Nature volume 388, pages 229–230 (1997)Cite this article

Reef-building corals are photogenic ‘doe-eyed invertebrates’ which form high-diversity, shallow-water communities that are often loosely analogized to rainforests. They are cnidarians — relatives of jellyfish and anemones — and are usually, but not invariably, colonial. Among their distinguishing characteristics are the algal (dinoflagellate) symbionts that live within their tissues, and the rapidity with which their calcium carbonate (aragonite) exoskeletons are formed.

Because reef-building corals are vulnerable to human-induced stress, resulting in the mysterious phenomenon of ‘bleaching’ (stress-induced loss of the pigmented algae, with sometimes fatal consequences)1, international monitoring and assessment groups have been set up2,3. The paper by Rowan et al.4 on page 265 of this issue now opens up new pathways to understanding this complex biological system. The authors convincingly extend previous work, showing that there is neither a single taxon of symbiotic algae, nor a uniquely obligate relationship between a host species and a single algal taxon. Rather, at least some symbiotic corals are communities, and the distribution of the various plant taxa is controlled by the levels of light that are available in the microenvironment. Moreover, a synergistic relationship between light and temperature controls the distributions of algal taxa within the coral colony. Under high-temperature stress, the algal symbionts at the upper end of their normal irradiance range are preferentially lost (bleached). And the new work implies that the relationship is somewhat symmetrical — at marginally stressful temperatures, we would expect increases in irradiance to have similar effects.

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Figure 1: Latitudinal distributions of Holocene calcium-carbonate accumulation rates and types (shading indicates the relative importance of coral-algal communities), compared with temperature, surface-water aragonite saturation ratio7 and photosynthetically active surface radiation (400-700 nm)8.

References

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  12. Marshall, A. T. Science 271, 637-639 (1996).

  13. Vago, R., Gill, E. & Collingwood, J. C. Nature 386, 30-31 (1997).

  14. Buddemeier, R. W. & Kinzie, R. A. III Oceanogr. Mar. Biol. Annu. Rev. 14, 183-225 (1976).

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  1. Kansas Geological Survey, University of Kansas, 1930 Constant Avenue, Lawrence, 66047, Kansas, USA

    Robert W. Buddemeier

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Buddemeier, R. Making light work of adaptation. Nature 388, 229–230 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/40755

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