ArticleFunctional ecology2022
Nocturnal dissolved organic matter release by turf algae and its role in the microbialization of reefs.
Article in Functional ecology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Microbial Community Metabolism of Coral Reef Exometabolomes Broadens the Chemodiversity of Labile Dissolved Organic Matter.Environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Sponge exhalent metabolites influence coral reef picoplankton dynamics.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Coral high molecular weight carbohydrates support opportunistic microbes in bacterioplankton from an algae-dominated reef.mSystems · 2024Article
- Escaping the benthos with Coral Reef Arks: effects on coral translocation and fish biomass.PeerJ · 2024Article
- Nocturnal dissolved organic matter release by turf algae and its role in the microbialization of reefs.Functional ecology · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The increased release of dissolved organic matter (DOM) by algae has been associated with the fast but inefficient growth of opportunistic microbial pathogens and the ongoing degradation of coral reefs. Turf algae (consortia of microalgae and macroalgae commonly including cyanobacteria) dominate benthic communities on many reefs worldwide. Opposite to other reef algae that predominantly release DOM during the day, turf algae containing cyanobacteria may additionally release large amounts of DOM at night. However, this night-DOM release and its potential contribution to the microbialization of reefs remains to be investigated.We first tested the occurrence of hypoxic conditions at the turf algae-water interface, as a lack of oxygen will facilitate the production and release of fermentation intermediates as night-time DOM. Second, the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) release by turf algae was quantified during day time and nighttime, and the quality of day and night exudates as food for bacterioplankton was tested. Finally, DOC release rates of turf algae were combined with estimates of DOC release based on benthic community composition in 1973 and 2013 to explore how changes in benthic community composition affected the contribution of night-DOC to the reef-wide DOC production.A rapid shift from supersaturated to hypoxic conditions at the turf algae-water interface occurred immediately after the onset of darkness, resulting in night-DOC release rates similar to those during daytime. Bioassays revealed major differences in the quality between day and night exudates: Night-DOC was utilized by bacterioplankton two times faster than day-DOC, but yielded a four times lower growth efficiency. Changes in benthic community composition were estimated to have resulted in a doubling of DOC release since 1973, due to an increasing abundance of benthic cyanobacterial mats (BCMs), with night-DOC release by BCMs and turf algae accounting for >50% of the total release over a diurnal cycle.Night-DOC released by BCMs and turf algae is likely an important driver in the microbialization of reefs by stimulating microbial respiration at the expense of energy and nutrient transfer to higher trophic levels via the microbial loop, thereby threatening the productivity and biodiversity of these unique ecosystems. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
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