Contrasting trends in element incorporation in hyaline and miliolid foraminifera
Abstract. We analyzed trends in element incorporation between hyaline (perforate) and miliolid (imperforate) foraminifera in order to investigate processes involved in calcification affecting element incorporation into foraminiferal carbonate. For both groups, we observed similar trends in element incorporation with pCO2, suggesting there some mechanisms to transports ions to the site of calcification are similar for both calcification pathways, although the impact might be different across species. A previously published trans-membrane transport model assumes foraminifera utilize Ca2+ channels to transport calcium to the site of calcification. These channels are somewhat a-specific, leading to (accidental) transport of other free ions. By modelling the activity of free ions as a function of pCO2, we observed that speciation of some elements (like Zn and Ba) are heavily influenced by the formation of carbonate complexes. This leads to an increase in availability of free Zn and Ba with increasing pCO2, which leads to more transport to the site of calcification and subsequently incorporation in the foraminiferal shell. We further observed that incorporation of the trace elements studied here is positively correlated between the hyaline test building species. This could be due to dissimilar activity and/or selectivity of calcium channels between species, perhaps due to differences in size. For miliolid calcification, part of the calcium is obtained not only through channels but by also included seawater vesicles, which leads to similar element to calcium ratios between species and element partitioning which is more in line with inorganic carbonates.