{"id":144157,"date":"2014-02-07T17:15:07","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T19:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=144157"},"modified":"2014-02-07T17:15:07","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T19:15:07","slug":"life-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/life-rocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Life out of rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_144159\" style=\"max-width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-144159\" alt=\"Researchers conduct fieldwork on the rhodoliths of the Abrolhos Bank  \" src=\"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Tecno_Foto-3-Rodrigo-L.-de-Moura.jpg\" width=\"290\" height=\"193\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Tecno_Foto-3-Rodrigo-L.-de-Moura.jpg 290w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Tecno_Foto-3-Rodrigo-L.-de-Moura-120x80.jpg 120w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Tecno_Foto-3-Rodrigo-L.-de-Moura-250x166.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-credits-inline\"> RICARDO LE\u00c3O DE MOURA \/ UFRJ<\/span>Researchers conduct fieldwork on the rhodoliths of the Abrolhos Bank<span class=\"media-credits\"> RICARDO LE\u00c3O DE MOURA \/ UFRJ<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>The world\u2019s largest concentration of coralline algae that form rhodoliths feeds the South Atlantic with an enormous variety of marine life, nutrients and energy, according to a recent study published in the August 29, 2013 issue of <i>ISME Journal<\/i>.\u00a0 Located along the Abrolhos Bank, located between the southern part of Bahia State and the northern part of Esp\u00edrito Santo State in Brazil, the layers of limestone nodules formed over thousands of years by these algae cover nearly 21,000 km2 of the continental shelf.\u00a0 The study coordinated by Fabiano Thompson and Rodrigo Moura of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and Gilberto Amado Filho from the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro, involved the help of 11 more researchers from Brazil and Japan, in an effort to understand the ecological role of the rhodoliths and the organisms that inhabit these structures.\u00a0 \u201cRhodliths act like a condominium for marine life, offering habitat to larvae and young cnidarians, nematodes, mollusks and arthropods,\u201d explains Thompson. \u201cThey serve as a continuous source of fertilizer for the ocean.\u201d\u00a0 The study also suggests that various microorganisms associated with the rhodoliths help the algae produce limestone from the carbon and calcium dissolved in the seawater.\u00a0 By measuring the photosynthetic activity of the algae, the researchers estimated that this rhodolith bed is producing 565,000 tons of organic carbon every day (equivalent to the mass of 3,000 humpback whales). This corresponds to $500 billion in carbon credits a day.\u00a0 The ecosystem is at risk of shrinking, however, due to mineral extraction and the acidification of the oceans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coralline algae feed the ocean with marine life, nutrients and energy","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[206,209],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-144157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technoscience","tag-biodiversity","tag-biology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144157"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=144157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}