Phosphorus in Cold-Water Corals as a Proxy for Seawater Nutrient Chemistry

Montagna, Paolo
McCulloch, Malcolm
Taviani, Marco
Mazzoli, Claudio
Vendrell, Begoña

¹Istituto Centrale per la Ricerca Scientifica e Technologica Applicata al Mare (ICRAM), Via di Casalotti 300, 00166, Rome, Italy. ²Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. ³Istituto di Scienze Marine (ISMAR), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Via P. Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy. ⁴Dipartimento Mineralogia e Petrologia, Università di Padova, Corso G. Garibaldi 37, 35137 Padova, Italy. ⁵Istituto di Geoscienze e Georisorse, CNR, Corso G. Garibaldi 37, 35137 Padova, Italy. ⁶Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Passeig Maritim de la Barcelorieta, 37-49 08003 Barcelona, Spain.

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]

Supporting Online Material: www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5781/1788/DC1; Materials and Methods; SOM Text; Figs. S1 to S4; Table S1; References

3 February 2006; accepted 11 May 2006

10.1126/science.1125781

Science 312(5781):p 1788-1791, June 23, 2006.

Phosphorus is a key macronutrient being strongly enriched in the deep ocean as a result of continuous export and remineralization of biomass from primary production. We show that phosphorus incorporated within the skeletons of the cosmopolitan cold-water coral Desmophyllum dianthus is directly proportional to the ambient seawater phosphorus concentration and thus may serve as a paleo-oceanographic proxy for variations in ocean productivity as well as changes in the residence times and sources of deep-water masses. The application of this tool to fossil specimens from the Mediterranean reveals phosphorus-enriched bottom waters at the end of the Younger Dryas period.