Ocean acidification and the loss of phenolic substances in marine plants

DOI

Rising atmospheric CO2 often triggers the production of plant phenolics, including many that serve as herbivore deterrents, digestion reducers, antimicrobials, or ultraviolet sunscreens. Such responses are predicted by popular models of plant defense, especially resource availability models which link carbon availability to phenolic biosynthesis. CO2 availability is also increasing in the oceans, where anthropogenic emissions cause ocean acidification, decreasing seawater pH and shifting the carbonate system towards further CO2 enrichment. Such conditions tend to increase seagrass productivity but may also increase rates of grazing on these marine plants. Here we show that high CO2 / low pH conditions of OA decrease, rather than increase, concentrations of phenolic protective substances in seagrasses and eurysaline marine plants. We observed a loss of simple and polymeric phenolics in the seagrass Cymodocea nodosa near a volcanic CO2 vent on the Island of Vulcano, Italy, where pH values decreased from 8.1 to 7.3 and pCO2 concentrations increased ten-fold. We observed similar responses in two estuarine species, Ruppia maritima and Potamogeton perfoliatus, in in situ Free-Ocean-Carbon-Enrichment experiments conducted in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay, USA. These responses are strikingly different than those exhibited by terrestrial plants. The loss of phenolic substances may explain the higher-than-usual rates of grazing observed near undersea CO2 vents and suggests that ocean acidification may alter coastal carbon fluxes by affecting rates of decomposition, grazing, and disease. Our observations temper recent predictions that seagrasses would necessarily be "winners" in a high CO2 world.

In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Lavigne and Gattuso, 2011) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation by seacarb is 2014-02-14.

Supplement to: Arnold, Thomas; Mealey, Christopher; Leahey, Hannah; Miller, A Whitman; Hall-Spencer, Jason M; Milazzo, Marco; Maers, Kelly (2012): Ocean Acidification and the Loss of Phenolic Substances in Marine Plants. PLoS ONE, 7(4), e35107

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.829532
Related Identifier IsSupplementTo https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0035107.t004
Related Identifier IsDocumentedBy https://cran.r-project.org/package=seacarb
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.829532
Provenance
Creator Arnold, Thomas; Mealey, Christopher; Leahey, Hannah; Miller, A Whitman (ORCID: 0000-0003-0484-182X); Hall-Spencer, Jason M ORCID logo; Milazzo, Marco; Maers, Kelly
Publisher PANGAEA
Contributor Yang, Yan
Publication Year 2012
Funding Reference Seventh Framework Programme https://doi.org/10.13039/100011102 Crossref Funder ID 265103 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/265103 Mediterranean Sea Acidification in a Changing Climate
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 497 data points
Discipline Immunology; Life Sciences; Medicine; Microbiology, Virology and Immunology
Spatial Coverage (-76.544W, 38.167S, 14.961E, 39.059N)
Temporal Coverage Begin 2010-05-01T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2011-07-31T00:00:00Z