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Effect of Mg/Ca ratio in seawater on shell composition in shallow benthic foraminifera

The ratio of magnesium to calcium (Mg/Ca) in CaCO3 shells of foraminifera is widely used to determine paleotemperatures. However, Mg/Ca is highly variable within and between species, suggesting a strong physiological influence on the incorporation of Mg2+ into the shells. While most field and laboratory calibrations have focused on the effect of temperature, we chose to study the effect of ambient Mg/Ca on the calcification process and the final shell composition. We cultured two species of symbiont‐bearing benthic foraminifera, Amphistegina lobifera and Amphistegina lessonii, in seawater with different Mg/Ca ratios. Electron probe analysis of the shell Mg/Ca revealed a positive (but not entirely linear) correlation with Mg/Ca in the culturing media with slightly different curves for each species. Partition coefficients of Mg2+ (DMg) in the calcite shells showed a decrease by a factor of roughly 2 between the lowest and highest Mg/Ca in the ambient water. This was previously demonstrated in inorganic calcite precipitation experiments. However, the biogenic DMg was significantly lower than the inorganic one, suggesting a physiological mechanism that reduces Mg/Ca at the calcification site. Unlike inorganic experiments that display a dependence of DMg on the kinetics of precipitation, the biogenic DMg is not correlated with the rate of calcification. Both DMg and calcification rates in our experiment were sensitive to the Mg/Ca ratio rather than the concentration of either Ca2+ or Mg2+. The largest addition of CaCO3 was obtained at Mg/Ca of 1, and not at present‐day seawater ratio (Mg/Ca = 5). This may reflect the Mg/Ca that prevailed during the Eocene (Mg/Ca ∼ 1.5), when this genus evolved.