Phosphorus metabolism in coral reef communities: exchange between the water column and bottom biotopes

✍ Scribed by Yu. I. Sorokin

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 727 KB
• Volume: 242
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1573-5141
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00018066

✦ Synopsis

Exchange of phosphate between components of the reef bottom and the water column were studied on reefs around Heron Island (Great Barrier Reef), both in aquaria and in in situ enclosures, using radioactive phosphorus (32P) as a tracer. Living corals, dead corals, coral rubble overgrown with periphyton, and soft sediments of coral sand were used in experiments . In all of these components of bottom reef biotopes, two opposite flows of inorganic phosphate were recorded and measured, i .e . the rate of P0 4-P uptake from water (Ac), and its release (Ac ). At ambient P04-P concentrations in water of 0 .1-0.3 ymol 1 -1 , both flows varied in living corals and coral rubble between 10 and 70 jig P kg -1 h -1 , 3-10 mg p M-2 day -1, and in coral sand between 10 and 30µg P kg -1 h _ 1, or 2-7 mg PM-2 day -1 .