English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Nitrogen and phosphorus uptake rates of different species from a coral reef community after a nutrient pulse

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons210327

den Haan,  J.
Permanent Research Group Microsensor, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons210290

Brocke,  Hannah Juliane
Permanent Research Group Microsensor, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)

Den_Haan_2016.pdf
(Publisher version), 3MB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

den Haan, J., Huisman, J., Brocke, H. J., Goehlich, H., Latijnhouwers, K., van Heeringen, S., et al. (2016). Nitrogen and phosphorus uptake rates of different species from a coral reef community after a nutrient pulse. Scientific Reports, 6: 28821, pp. 1-13.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0001-C2BE-E
Abstract
Terrestrial runoff after heavy rainfall can increase nutrient concentrations in waters overlying coral reefs that otherwise experience low nutrient levels. Field measurements during a runoff event showed a sharp increase in nitrate (75-fold), phosphate (31-fold) and ammonium concentrations (3-fold) in waters overlying a fringing reef at the island of Curacao (Southern Caribbean). To understand how benthic reef organisms make use of such nutrient pulses, we determined ammonium, nitrate and phosphate uptake rates for one abundant coral species, turf algae, six macroalgal and two benthic cyanobacterial species in a series of laboratory experiments. Nutrient uptake rates differed among benthic functional groups. The filamentous macroalga Cladophora spp., turf algae and the benthic cyanobacterium Lyngbya majuscula had the highest uptake rates per unit biomass, whereas the coral Madracis mirabilis had the lowest. Combining nutrient uptake rates with the standing biomass of each functional group on the reef, we estimated that the ammonium and phosphate delivered during runoff events is mostly taken up by turf algae and the two macroalgae Lobophora variegata and Dictyota pulchella. Our results support the often proposed, but rarely tested, assumption that turf algae and opportunistic macroalgae primarily benefit from episodic inputs of nutrients to coral reefs.