{"id":94422,"date":"2019-04-12T14:17:39","date_gmt":"2019-04-13T00:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=94422"},"modified":"2020-05-08T11:19:35","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T21:19:35","slug":"coral-reef-bacteria-synchronize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2019\/04\/12\/coral-reef-bacteria-synchronize\/","title":{"rendered":"Coral reef bacteria synchronize changes across vast distance"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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Jennifer Smith, one of the coral reef researchers, with sampling tents. (Photo courtesy: Emily Kelly)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In coral reef ecosystems, amid stony corals, fronds of algae and schools of fish, microorganisms are essential for recycling nutrients—transforming bits of organic matter into forms of nitrogen and phosphorus, for example, that are useful to photosynthetic organisms.<\/p>\n

A study published in Nature Communications<\/em><\/a> by researchers at the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at Mānoa<\/a>, San Diego State University (SDSU<\/abbr>), Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC<\/abbr> San Diego and other institutions revealed that the bacteria present in the water overlying dozens of coral reefs changed dramatically during the night, and then returned to the same daytime community as observed the morning before. Further, as if these communities were all privy to the same schedule, these changes were synchronized across reefs separated by hundreds of miles.<\/p>\n

Said Craig Nelson<\/strong>, assistant professor of oceanography<\/a> at the UH<\/abbr> Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology<\/a> (SOEST<\/abbr>) and study co-lead, “Previous studies of marine microbes have shown that different functional groups change their activity over the day, but microbial populations remain relatively constant over diel (24-hour) cycles. Those who study reefs know that these ecosystems change significantly from day to night, but this study reveals one previously invisible aspect of that change: a dramatic and predictable shift—not only in what microbes are doing—but which groups are most abundant.”<\/p>\n