Taihun Kim1,2, Garance Perrois1, Léonard Pons1, Anna Jöst1, David Baker3
1Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology, Republic of Korea - 2University of Science & Technology, Republic of Korea - 3The University of Hong Kong, China
While most concerns about coral focus on its decline in low-latitude areas, the expansion of coral to temperate regions is currently gaining more attention. Jeju Is. of South Korea, is at the northern limit of coral environmental tolerance, yet coral colonies have been extended in some areas for years. Surprisingly, coral has colonized a wide range of habitats, from the warm and relatively oligotrophic to the more eutrophic coastal area of Jeju Is. This indicates that corals are capable of switching their trophic strategies from autotrophy to heterotrophy. The rapid environmental change occurring in Jeju waters offers an unprecedented opportunity to better understand the trophic plasticity of corals allowing them to survive and expand in very different environment. Here, we applied the carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values and related modelling (SIBER: Stable Isotope Bayesian Ellipses in R) to evaluate trophic strategies and plasticity across sites and seasons of four common Jeju’s coral species. Our results showed that Alveopora japonica is autotrophic, while Montipora millepora and Psammocora spp. are mixotrophic, Oulastrea crispata is heterotrophic. In addition, comparing the trophic strategies between newly expanded corals in unfavourable sites and pristine sites highlight the coral nutritional adaptation to environmental condition. This might also reveal the trophic plasticity limit of each species. Assessment of the trophic niche of corals in Jeju, might provide insight into the future potential expansion of these species around temperate areas.
Biography
Taihun Kim is a senior research scientist from Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology, and associate professor of University of Science & Technology. His research focuses on shallow coral ecosystems, ranging from tropical to temperate regions. He studies ecophysiology, biochemistry, and geochemistry to understand marine organisms by applications of lipidomics, stable isotope analyses, diving-PAM etc.