Ponente
Descripción
Ocean acidification and warming will profoundly affect marine organisms, the ecosystems that organisms are embedded within, and inevitably the processes ecosystems undergo. However, the interactive effects of ocean acidification and warming on organismal physiology remain a gap of uncertainty in a field that has prioritized studying aspects of environmental change as isolated phenomena. The variable coastal environment of the rocky intertidal, and the organisms within the ecosystem, provide a model system to understand the physiological mechanisms for how organisms respond to environmental change. To address these limitations, a mesocosm experiment was conducted using thermal performance curves to empirically characterize the relationship between biological rates of respiration and grazing of Tegula funebralis, an intertidal gastropod ubiquitous to the California coastline. Accounting for site-specific and future conditions of seawater of Southern California, this study measured the performance of T. funebralis to a range of eight site-specific temperatures (12 - 26°C) crossed with a blocked exposure to either current average (8.0) or future pH predictions (7.7). Measurements for respiration rates were taken after a 10-day exposure (one-week acclimation), while measurements for herbivory rates were taken every 3 days during the experiment, thereby enabling us to quantify energetic expenditure and consumption. Our results exemplify how organismal-level interactions may amplify or reduce the effects of environmental change, as each organismal function uniquely scales up to affect different ecosystem functions.
