The ongoing increase in anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is changing the global marine environment and is causing warming and acidification of the oceans. Reduction of CO2 to a sustainable level is required to avoid further marine change. Many studies investigate the potential of marine carbon sinks (e.g. seagrass) to mitigate anthropogenic emissions, however, information on storage...

Coralline algae are among the most sensitive calcifying organisms to ocean acidification as a result of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2 ). Little is known, however, about the combined impacts of increased pCO2 , ocean acidification, and sea surface temperature on tissue mortality and skeletal dissolution of coralline algae. To address this issue, we conducted factorial manipulative e...

Coralline algae provide important ecosystem services. In situ observations of how they respond to different environmental conditions can help us to understand (i) their ability to adapt to their local environment and (ii) their capacity to acclimatize to a novel thermal regime. Here, individuals of the tropical coralline algae, Lithophyllum kotschyanum, were translocated on a coral reef from th...

Rhodoliths are coralline red algal assemblages that commonly occur in marine habitats from the tropics to polar latitudes. They form rigid structures of high-magnesium calcite and have a good fossil record. Here I show that rhodoliths are ecosystem engineers in a high Arctic environment that increase local biodiversity by providing habitat. Gouged by boring mussels, originally solid rhodoliths ...

Citation: Vásquez-Elizondo RM and Enríquez S (2017) Light Absorption in Coralline Algae (Rhodophyta): A Morphological and Functional Approach to Understanding Species Distribution in a Coral Reef Lagoon. Front. Mar. Sci. 4:297. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00297 Light Absorption in Coralline Algae (Rhodophyta): A Morphological and Functional Approach to Understanding Species Distribution in a Coral ...

Reef and temperate carbonate units alternate in the upper Miocene^Pliocene stratigraphic record of Betic basins palaeogeographically connected to the Mediterranean. Shallow-water coralline algal assemblages in temperate units differ in taxonomic composition from those in reef carbonate units. The difference attains the subfamily level since the temperate lithofacies are characterised by assembl...

Coralline red algae play a key role in the ecology of near shore marine ecosystems and are increasingly being used to study the effects of climate change in the marine environment. Corallines are very difficult to identify to species, and even to genus, using morpho-anatomy, likely complicating studies of their ecology, physiology, and biodiversity. We sequenced a 296 base pair fragment of chlo...