Skeletal porosity of a cold-water coral increases with decreasing aragonite saturation state along a depth gradient in the Mediterranean Sea.

Authors

Fiorella Prada, Chiara Marchini, Paolo Montagna, Marco Taviani, Giorgia Maestrini, Arianna Mancuso, Valentina Di Fazio, Christian Ghiroldi, Andrea Simoni, Iryna Polishchuk, Boaz Pokroy, Raffaele Gattelli, Giuseppe Falini, Stefano Goffredo

Published in

BMC biology. Jun 19, 2026. Epub Jun 19, 2026.

Abstract

Cold-water corals (CWCs) are key ecosystem engineers that create complex three-dimensional habitats much like tropical reefs, but in deep, cold seas. However, like other reef-building systems, they are increasingly threatened by climate change and ocean acidification. CWC communities in the Mediterranean Sea may be especially vulnerable because these waters absorb more atmospheric CO₂ than the global ocean, making it a mesocosm that mirrors broader global trends affecting marine life. Since calcification is energetically costly and likely becomes even more demanding as pH and carbonate ion availability decline, understanding how the decrease in aragonite saturation state (Ω_arag) affects biomineralization is essential for predicting the future of these corals.
Here, we investigated skeletal structural and compositional changes of the scleractinian CWC Desmophyllum dianthus along an Ω_arag gradient in the Mediterranean Sea using specimens collected between 400 and 1200 m depth. Our findings indicate that skeletal porosity increases at the macro-scale with decreasing Ω_arag, while micro- and nano-scale structural and compositional features remained unaffected.
The persistence of micro- and nano-scale skeletal features across an 800 m depth gradient suggests that D. dianthus maintains tight biological control over mineralization at these scales, even as Ω_arag declines. This control does not extend to the macro-scale, where increasing porosity alters the skeleton's overall architecture under lower Ω_arag. D. dianthus thus appears to preserve the fundamental "building blocks" of its skeleton while changing its larger-scale structure, a decoupling that may make macro-scale porosity an early marker of acidification stress in CWCs.

PMID:
42321832
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 20 Jun 2026.

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