title: The "Flexi-Chamber": A Novel Cost-Effective In Situ Respirometry Chamber for Coral Physiological Measurements.
abstract: Coral reefs are threatened worldwide, with environmental stressors increasingly affecting the ability of reef-building corals to sustain growth from calcification (G), photosynthesis (P) and respiration (R). These processes support the foundation of coral reefs by directly influencing biogeochemical nutrient cycles and complex ecological interactions and therefore represent key knowledge required for effective reef management. However, metabolic rates are not trivial to quantify and typically rely on the use of cumbersome in situ respirometry chambers and/or the need to remove material and examine ex situ, thereby fundamentally limiting the scale, resolution and possibly the accuracy of the rate data. Here we describe a novel low-cost in situ respirometry bag that mitigates many constraints of traditional glass and plexi-glass incubation chambers. We subsequently demonstrate the effectiveness of our novel "Flexi-Chamber" approach via two case studies: 1) the Flexi-Chamber provides values of P, R and G for the reef-building coral Siderastrea cf. stellata collected from reefs close to Salvador, Brazil, which were statistically similar to values collected from a traditional glass respirometry vessel; and 2) wide-scale application of obtaining P, R and G rates for different species across different habitats to obtain inter- and intra-species differences. Our novel cost-effective design allows us to increase sampling scale of metabolic rate measurements in situ without the need for destructive sampling and thus significantly expands on existing research potential, not only for corals as we have demonstrated here, but also other important benthic groups.
authors.affiliation: Coral Reef Research Unit, School of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Emma F
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Camp
authors.affiliation: Coral Reef Ecology Group (CORE), Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (ZMT), Fahrenheitstr. 6, 28359 Bremen, Germany; Faculty of Biology and Chemistry (FB 2), University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Sophie-Louise
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Krause
authors.affiliation: Coral Reef and Global Changes Research Group (RECOR), Geosciences Institute, Federal University of Bahia, Barão de Jeremoabo St., Ondina University Campus, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
authors.forename: Lourianne M F
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.affiliation: Coral Reef Ecology Group (CORE), Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (ZMT), Fahrenheitstr. 6, 28359 Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Malik S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Naumann
authors.affiliation: Coral Reef and Global Changes Research Group (RECOR), Geosciences Institute, Federal University of Bahia, Barão de Jeremoabo St., Ondina University Campus, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
authors.forename: Ruy K P
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Kikuchi
authors.affiliation: Coral Reef Research Unit, School of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Coral Reef Ecology Group (CORE), Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (ZMT), Fahrenheitstr. 6, 28359 Bremen, Germany; Faculty of Biology and Chemistry (FB 2), University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wild
authors.affiliation: Coral Reef Research Unit, School of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom; Functional Plant Biology and Climate Change Cluster (C3), University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Suggett
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D037421:Anthozoa / Q000502:physiology*; D057894:Coral Reefs; D017753:Ecosystem; D010788:Photosynthesis / Q000502:physiology