Abstract
Although octocorals are a key component of marine hard-bottom systems, their feeding performance is still poorly understood. Understanding carbon budget trends in octocorals’ feeding ecology seems essential to assess their role in benthic–pelagic coupling and to predict their responses to environmental changes. Herein, we provide a review of the feeding ecology of octocorals and an overall data reassessment of their carbon budgets through a systematic and comprehensive search of peer-reviewed literature published between 1960 and 2020, highlighting knowledge gaps. Overall, the feeding ecology of more than 95% of octocoral species remains unknown. Based on the available data, suspension feeding accounts for 162.8 ± 171.0% of the metabolic requirements in azooxanthellate octocorals and 28.7 ± 32.3% in zooxanthellate octocorals. Autotrophy is responsible for 156.7 ± 113.9% of the acquired carbon in zooxanthellate octocorals. However, this value is significantly lower in gorgonian phenotypes compared to other soft corals. We present a conceptual framework describing and exploring the most relevant hypotheses regarding putative advantages of octocorals over scleractinians against environmental changes, including their ability to decrease energy expenses to overcome stress events, their lower dependency on autotrophy, and the type of interaction (facultative and flexible) with their symbionts.
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Data availability
The datasets and the R codes of the current study are publicly available in the GitHub repository, https://github.com/pderviche/Octocoral-feeding-ecology.
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Acknowledgements
This article is dedicated to the memory of Paulo Lana, a great researcher and a dear friend, who passed away a few weeks before the publication of the manuscript. We are grateful for the support from the Center for Marine Studies of the Federal University of Paraná. We also thank to Rosana Moreira da Rocha, Tito Monteiro da Cruz Lotufo, and the anonymous reviewer for their valuable suggestions that contributed substantially to improve the manuscript.
Funding
PD was funded by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) social demand scholarship. AM was supported by a ‘Juan de la Cierva—Formación’ fellowship (FJC2020-044080-I) funded by the Spanish ‘Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación’. PL was a grantee from the Brazilian National Research Foundation (CNPq).
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PD performed the literature search. PD and PL conceptualized the present study. PD and AM performed the statistical analysis. The three authors contributed intellectually to data interpretation, and discussion. PD wrote a first manuscript draft, which was heavily edited by PL and AM.
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Derviche, P., Menegotto, A. & Lana, P. Carbon budget trends in octocorals: a literature review with data reassessment and a conceptual framework to understand their resilience to environmental changes. Mar Biol 169, 159 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-022-04146-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-022-04146-4