[Coral-List] Test of the detrital "sink side" of the sponge loop hypothesis RE carbon cycling on coral reefs

[Pawlik, Joseph]

Greetings Colleagues,

I'm pleased to announce that an important paper from Lauren Olinger's PhD thesis has just come out - it is a "sink side" test of the sponge loop hypothesis that used stable isotope and eDNA metabarcoding analyses to probe the contribution of sponges to coral reef detritus:

Olinger, L.K., McClenaghan B., Hajibabaei, M., Fahner, N., Berghuis, L. Rajabi, H., Erwin, P., Lane, C.S., Pawlik, J.R. 2024. Looking for the sponge loop: Analyses of detritus on a Caribbean forereef using stable isotope and eDNA metabarcoding techniques. PeerJ, 12:e16970

https://peerj.com/articles/16970/

This work comes after a "source side" test of the sponge loop hypothesis, targeting detritus production by large, emergent sponges on Caribbean reefs:

McMurray, S.E., Stubler, A.D., Erwin, P.M., Finelli, C.M., Pawlik, J.R. 2018. A test of the sponge-loop hypothesis for emergent Caribbean reef sponges. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 588: 1-14. DOI 10.3354/meps12466.

https://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/2018McMurrayMEPS.pdf

Neither of these studies provides support for the sponge loop hypothesis as originally proposed.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph R. Pawlik
Frank Hawkins Kenan Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology
Dept. of Biology and Marine Biology
UNCW Center for Marine Science
5600 Marvin K Moss Lane
Wilmington, NC  28409
Office:(910)962-2377; Cell:(910)232-3579
Website: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/index.html
PDFs: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/pubs2.html
Video Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/skndiver011
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