THE TOUCAN PROJECT
Trophic links between corals and diazotrophs
PI: Fanny Houlbrèque, ENTROPIE, IRD New Caledonia
Oligotrophic coral lagoons harbor large amounts of planktonic cyanobacteria that fix atmospheric dinitrogen (diazotrophs). It is now established that corals, apart from being autotrophic, are also important predators of plankton. Planktonic N2-fixing organisms or plankton that have benefited from N2 fixation could be an important source of food and nitrogen for corals through their heterotrophic nutrition, but this has never been studied or quantified. Using isotopic, physiological and chemical analysis techniques, we seek to understand the interactions between scleractinous corals, microplankton and planktonic diazotrophs in the context of climate change.
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This work is part of the PhD thesis pf Valentine Meunier (Supervison: F. Houlbrèque, S. Bonnet)