BIO3082 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Total Inorganic Carbon, Coral Bleaching, Symbiodinium
Lecture 17 – Coral Reefs
Ecological and Economic Importance of Coral Reefs
• Great Barrier Reef- biodiversity hotspot
o Coral reefs – most productive and diverse of marine ecosystems
o Supports 1600+ fish, 3000+ mollusc, 600+ echinoderm and six sea
turtle species
• Provide host of Services for Humans
o Provisioning
▪ Reef provides a range of products
▪ Fishing industry employs 2000 people and is worth 1 billion
AUD annually (economic)
o Cultural
▪ Brings numerous benefits for recreation, wellbeing and
education
▪ Tourism attracts 2 million people – worth 5 billion AUD
annually
o Regulating
▪ Reef buffers coastal communities from storm damage and is a
quantitively important sink of carbon dioxide emissions
o Supporting
▪ Reef is a biologically-mediated habitat
▪ Serves as one of main primary production hubs and
biodiversity centres in sea
Explain the Symbiotic Relationship between Corals and Symbiodinium
• Coral bleaching is caused by disruption of symbiosis
o Corals are colonised by endosymbionts from phylum Dinoflagellata
and genus Symbiodinium (phototrophic eukaryotes)
▪ Phototrophs provide main source of organic carbon for corals
→ taken up by coral → critical for growth and survival
o Symbdiodinium is inside the cell → host cells provide it with dissolved
inorganic nitrogen (DIN) in form of ammonium, phosphate and
bicarbonate → symbiodinium uses DIC (dissolved inorganic carbon)
and host cell takes organic carbons produced (carbohydrate, lipids,
amino acids) for its growth
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