Carlot J. auteur aut IRD Rouze H. auteur aut IRD Barneche D. R. auteur aut IRD Merciere A. auteur aut IRD Espiau B. auteur aut IRD Cardini U. auteur aut IRD Brandl S. J. auteur aut IRD Casey J. M. auteur aut IRD Perez-Rosales G. auteur aut IRD Adjeroud Mehdi auteur aut IRD Hedouin L. auteur aut IRD Parravicini V. auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf reformatted digital access Coral reefs provide a range of important services to humanity, which are underpinned by community-level ecological processes such as coral calcification. Estimating these processes relies on our knowledge of individual physiological rates and species-specific abundances in the field. For colonial animals such as reef-building corals, abundance is frequently expressed as the relative surface cover of coral colonies, a metric that does not account for demographic parameters such as coral size. This may be problematic because many physiological rates are directly related to organism size, and failure to account for linear scaling patterns may skew estimates of ecosystem functioning. In the present study, we characterize the scaling of three physiological rates - calcification, respiration, and photosynthesis - considering the colony size for six prominent, reef-building coral taxa in Mo'orea, French Polynesia. After a seven-day acclimation period in the laboratory, we quantified coral physiological rates for three hours during daylight (i.e., calcification and gross photosynthesis) and one hour during night light conditions (i.e., dark respiration). Our results indicate that area-specific calcification rates are higher for smaller colonies across all taxa. However, photosynthesis and respiration rates remain constant over the colony-size gradient. Furthermore, we revealed a correlation between the demographic dynamics of coral genera and the ratio between net primary production and calcification rates. Therefore, intraspecific scaling of reef-building coral physiology not only improves our understanding of community-level coral reef functioning but it may also explain species-specific responses to disturbances. specialized calcification coral physiology coral reefs demographic dynamics photosynthesis respiration POLYNESIE FRANCAISE MOOREA 034 12 3 e8613 [11 p.] 2022 2045-7758 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010084601 10.1002/ece3.8613 2045-7758 [F B010084601] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010084601 https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/2022-05/010084601.pdf IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2022-05-04 2025-02-24 fdi:010084601 fre