From the product to the process: Fine-scale skeletal structures of scleractinian corals and their relevance to biomineralization models, geochemical sampling strategies, and phylogenetic reconstructions
Objectives The endosymbiosis with Symbiodiniaceae is key to the ecological success of reef-building corals. However, climate change is threatening to destabilize this symbiosis on a global scale. Most studies looking into the response of corals to heat str ...
Glacier-fed streams are the cold, ultra-oligotrophic, and unstable streams that are fed by glacial meltwater. Despite these extreme conditions, they harbour a diverse and abundant microbial diversity that develops into biofilms, covering the boulders and s ...
Biominerals are used by natural organisms for example as structural supports and optical sensors. They are produced from a limited number of elements and under ambient conditions. Nevertheless, they often possess excellent mechanical properties and sometim ...
Otoliths are calcium carbonate components of the stato-acoustical organ responsible for hearing and maintenance of the body balance in teleost fish. During their formation, control over, e.g., morphology and carbonate polymorph is influenced by complex ins ...
Nitrogen limitation is the foundation of stable coral-algal symbioses. Diazotrophs, prokaryotes capable of fixing N-2 into ammonia, support the productivity of corals in oligotrophic waters, but could contribute to the destabilization of holobiont function ...
The symbiont-bearing jellyfish Cassiopea live a benthic lifestyle, positioning themselves upside-down on sediments in shallow waters to allow their endosymbiotic algae to photosynthesize in the sunlight. Over the last decades Cassiopea has become increasin ...
Despite the structural and functional information contained in the statistical coupling between pairs of residues in a protein, coevolution associated with function is often obscured by artifactual signals such as genetic drift, which shapes a protein's ph ...
Pigments homologous to the green fluorescent protein (GFP) have been proposed to fine-tune the internal light microclimate of corals, facilitating photoacclimation of photosynthetic coral symbionts (Symbiodiniaceae) to life in different reef habitats and e ...
Coral reefs around the world are under threat from anomalous heat waves that are causing the widespread decline of hard corals. Different coral taxa are known to have different sensitivities to heat, although variation in susceptibilities have also been ob ...
Tropical coral reefs are hotspots of marine productivity, owing to the association of reef-building corals with endosymbiotic algae and metabolically diverse bacterial communities. However, the functional importance of fungi, well-known for their contribut ...
