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Fig. 1 | BMC Ecology

Fig. 1

From: Skeletal light-scattering accelerates bleaching response in reef-building corals

Fig. 1

Dynamics of bleaching response variables. High- and low-\( \mu ^{\prime}_{{S,m}} \) corals (means in gray and black respectively in b–f) responded differentially to experimental light (broken line in a) and temperature (dotted line in a) conditions (CT-CL: control temperature [26 °C] and light [83 μmol quanta m−2 s−1], CT-HL: control temperature and high light [328 μmol quanta m−2 s−1], HT-CL: high temperature [32 °C] and control light, and HT-HL: high temperature and high light; shaded areas are control). Under temperature stress (HT-CL and HT-HL), Symbiodinium in hospite of low-\( \mu ^{\prime}_{{S,m}} \) corals experienced suppressed photosynthetic performance (b, c) and reduced cell density (d), and holobiont reflectance (e) of low-\( \mu ^{\prime}_{{S,m}} \) corals approached the level of bare skeleton (dashed lines in e are post-experiment skeletal reflectance). Low-\( \mu ^{\prime}_{{S,m}} \) corals experienced progressively greater average rates of photochemical efficiency loss (CT-CL p = 0.755, CT-HL p = 0.032, HT-CL p = 0.112, and HT-HL p = 0.042) as heat and light stress were combined (f). Isolating the effect of light from temperature on photochemical efficiency (g), \( \mu ^{\prime}_{{S,m}} \) is correlated with the temporal rate of F v /F m change \( \left( {\varDelta PE \sim {{\varDelta^{ 2} \left( {F_{V} /F_{M} } \right)} \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{\varDelta^{ 2} \left( {F_{V} /F_{M} } \right)} {\left( {\varDelta t\varDelta I} \right)}}} \right. \kern-0pt} {\left( {\varDelta t\varDelta I} \right)}}} \right) \) expressed as the difference between CL and HL (Eq. 2) for corals exposed to HT (filled circles; p = 0.007) or CT (open circles; p = 0.07). All error bars are standard error of the mean

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