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The Builders of the Oceans – Part I: Coral Architecture from the Tropics to the Poles, from the Shallow to the Deep

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Marine Animal Forests

Abstract

At any scale, corals are live buildings. Their carbonate skeletons constitute three-dimensional frameworks allowing the delicate coral polyp to emerge from the sea bottom and populate vast areas of the ocean. These constructions, reminders of the structural complexity found in the forest, are found everywhere in the Earth’s oceans, from the polar regions to the tropics and from the tidal pools to the dark abyssal plains. They can be found as solitary or in modest aggregations of a few centimeters in size or gargantuan colonies of mythological proportions; when many, they can create the largest nonhuman structures built by organisms. Life and death of the coral “trees” are influenced by the mineral architecture and the presence of bioeroders. Shape and size facilitate or restrict their access to food and light and influence structural strength tested by currents and swells. The role that corals play in the oceans defies any attempt at simplification since it transcends the life span of the small polyp, geological time, and ecological space. Long after the polyps are gone, coral skeletons continue to harbor numerous organisms of disparate nature by overgrowing, drilling, and dissolving the carbonates. These chapters are a personal journey into the coral forest of the world’s oceans, with stations along singular aspects of their present and past. Our point of departure is the ecosystem engineering of the coral polyp through the construction of its skeleton, followed by selected examples of human interactions with the “stone from the sea” ( see Chapter “The Builders of the Oceans – Part II: Corals from the Past to the Present (The Stone from the Sea)”

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Marina Carreiro, Filipe Porteiro, Iris Sampaio (ImagDOP), Paal Buhl-Mortensen (IMR), Josep Maria Gili (ICM-CSIC), J.M. Roberts (Changing Ocean Expedition, Heriot-Watt University), J.M. Aldrey Vázquez (Grupo de Estudo do Medio Mariño), T. Lundälv (University of Gothenburg, Sweden; AWI, Bremerhaven, Germany), ICM-CSIC/IFM-GEOMAR, SEHAMA, ImagDOP/EMAM, and Ricardo Aguilar (OCEANA) for facilitating images for this chapter. Thanks to Àngel López-Sanz for performing Fig. 9 and to Jordi Corbera for supplying the fantastic drawings in Fig. 14. Also friends and family (Jacob González-Solís, Jorge Bartolomé Zofío, Elmar Isbert) are greatly acknowledged for allowing us to use their private images and for going to the field to specifically take pictures for this chapter. Thanks also to L. Álvarez-Filip, WE Arntz and one anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments which highly contribute to improve the manuscript. Last but not least, many thanks to Heather Baxter for her great help and patience with the English editing. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 678760 (ATLAS). This output reflects only the author’s view and the European Union cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO), Centro Oceanográfico de Baleares, Moll de Ponent s/n, 07015, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

    Covadonga Orejas

  2. Energy, Environment and Water Research Center (EEWRC), The Cyprus Institute (CyI), P.O. Box 27456, CY-1645, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Carlos Jiménez

  3. Enalia Physis Environmental Research Centre, P.O. Box 26728, CY-1647, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Carlos Jiménez

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  1. Covadonga Orejas
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  2. Carlos Jiménez
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Correspondence to Covadonga Orejas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. Environmental Science & Technology Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

    Sergio Rossi

  2. LECOB / Ocean Observatory, CNRS / Pierre and Marie Curie Univ, Banyuls-sur-mer, France

    Lorenzo Bramanti

  3. Dept. Marine Biology & Oceanography, Institute of Marine Sciences, Barcelona, Spain

    Andrea Gori

  4. Spanish Institute of Oceanography, Balearic Oceanographic Centre, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

    Covadonga Orejas

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Orejas, C., Jiménez, C. (2017). The Builders of the Oceans – Part I: Coral Architecture from the Tropics to the Poles, from the Shallow to the Deep. In: Rossi, S., Bramanti, L., Gori, A., Orejas , C. (eds) Marine Animal Forests. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17001-5_10-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17001-5_10-2

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  1. Latest

    The Builders of the Oceans – Part I: Coral Architecture from the Tropics to the Poles, from the Shallow to the Deep
    Published:
    27 March 2017

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17001-5_10-2

  2. Original

    The Builders of the Oceans – Part I: Coral Architecture from the Tropics to the Poles, from the Shallow to the Deep
    Published:
    27 December 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17001-5_10-1

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