communitymodeling Archives - Page 2 of 8

Posts Tagged 'communitymodeling'

Sometimes (often?) responses to multiple stressors can be predicted from single-stressor effects: a case study using an agent-based population model of croaker in the Gulf of Mexico

Published 18 January 2024 Science Closed
Tags: abundance, biological response, BRcommunity, communitymodeling, fish, individualmodeling, modeling, morphology, mortality, multiple factors, North Atlantic, otherprocess, oxygen, performance, reproduction, temperature

Abstract

Objective

Rapid changes in the world’s oceans make assessment of fish population responses to multiple stressors, especially on scales relevant to management, increasingly important. I used an existing agent-based, spatially explicit model of Atlantic Croaker Micropogonias undulatus in the northern Gulf of Mexico to examine how temperature, hypoxia, and ocean acidification, singly and in combinations, affect long-term population dynamics.

Methods

I performed a factorial simulation experiment with each stressor at three levels and analyzed various treatment combinations to assess the additivity and multiplicity of interactions. The response variables were long-term equilibrium (final year) values of spawning stock biomass (SSB), recruitment, weight at age, and two measures of stock productivity (recruits per SSB and maximum recruitment) derived from the spawner–recruit relationship fitted to model output. I used the single-stressor effects from the experiment to predict how the response variables would change when all three stressors were changed. Single-stressor effects were combined as the sum of the fractional changes (additive scale) and the product of ratios of changes (multiplicative scale) and compared to the responses in simulations with all stressors imposed.

Result

Analyzing the factorial design for two-way and three-way interactions showed that there were many interactions on the additive scale but very few on the multiplicative scale. Thus, the responses to multiple stressors were well predicted from single stressor effects when combined as multiplicative effects.

Conclusion

I discuss how the lack of strong interactions could be due to model assumptions, the structure of the model, or oversimplified representation of stressor effects. Alternatively, the model and analysis may be sufficiently realistic and weak interactions on the multiplicative scale may be common. This would reduce a complicated multi-factor situation to a series of more tractable single-factor effects. A critical next step is to determine how we can a priori identify situations of low interactions (i.e., predictable from single-stressor effects) without having to already know the multi-stressor response.

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Continue reading ‘Sometimes (often?) responses to multiple stressors can be predicted from single-stressor effects: a case study using an agent-based population model of croaker in the Gulf of Mexico’

Functional changes across marine habitats due to ocean acidification

Published 15 January 2024 Science Closed
Tags: abundance, biological response, BRcommunity, calcification, chemistry, community composition, communitymodeling, field, growth, Mediterranean, modeling, otherprocess, performance, photosynthesis, reproduction, vents

Global environmental change drives diversity loss and shifts in community structure. A key challenge is to better understand the impacts on ecosystem function and to connect species and trait diversity of assemblages with ecosystem properties that are in turn linked to ecosystem functioning. Here we quantify shifts in species composition and trait diversity associated with ocean acidification (OA) by using field measurements at marine CO₂ vent systems spanning four reef habitats across different depths in a temperate coastal ecosystem. We find that both species and trait diversity decreased, and that ecosystem properties (understood as the interplay between species, traits, and ecosystem function) shifted with acidification. Furthermore, shifts in trait categories such as autotrophs, filter feeders, herbivores, and habitat-forming species were habitat-specific, indicating that OA may produce divergent responses across habitats and depths. Combined, these findings reveal the importance of connecting species and trait diversity of marine benthic habitats with key ecosystem properties to anticipate the impacts of global environmental change. Our results also generate new insights on the predicted general and habitat-specific ecological consequences of OA.

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Evaluating the effects of climate change and chemical, physical and biological stressors on nearshore coral reefs: a case study in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Published 15 December 2023 Science Closed
Tags: biological response, communitymodeling, corals, modeling, South Pacific

An understanding of the combined effects of climate change and other anthropogenic stressors, such as chemical exposures, is essential for improving ecological risk assessments of vulnerable ecosystems. In the Great Barrier Reef, coral reefs are under increasingly severe duress from increasing ocean temperatures, acidification and cyclone intensities associated with climate change. In addition to these stressors, inshore reef systems, such as the Mackay Whitsunday coastal zone are being impacted by other anthropogenic stressors, including chemical, nutrient and sediment exposures related to more intense rainfall events that increase catchment runoff of contaminated waters. To illustrate an approach for incorporating climate change into ecological risk assessment frameworks, we developed an adverse outcome pathway network to conceptually delineate effects of climate variables and PSII herbicide (diuron) exposures on scleractinian corals. This informed the development of a Bayesian network to quantitatively compare the effects of historical (1975-2005) and future projected climate on inshore hard coral bleaching, mortality, and cover. This Bayesian network demonstrated how risk may be predicted for multiple physical and biological stressors including temperature, ocean acidification, cyclones, sediments, macroalgae competition, and crown of thorns starfish predation, as well as chemical stressors such as nitrogen and herbicides. Climate scenarios included an ensemble of 16 downscaled models encompassing current and future conditions based on multiple emission scenarios for two thirty-year periods. It was found that both climate-related and catchment-related stressors pose a risk to these inshore reef systems, with projected increases in coral bleaching and coral mortality under all future climate scenarios. This modelling exercise can support the identification of risk drivers for the prioritisation of management interventions to build future resilient reefs.

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The appendicularian Oikopleura dioica can enhance carbon export in a high CO2 ocean

Published 22 November 2023 Science Closed
Tags: abundance, biogeochemistry, biological response, BRcommunity, chemistry, communitymodeling, field, mesocosms, modeling, morphology, North Atlantic, otherprocess, photosynthesis, phytoplankton, reproduction, zooplankton

Gelatinous zooplankton are increasingly recognized to play a key role in the ocean’s biological carbon pump. Appendicularians, a class of pelagic tunicates, are among the most abundant gelatinous plankton in the ocean, but it is an open question how their contribution to carbon export might change in the future. Here, we conducted an experiment with large volume in situ mesocosms (~55–60 m³ and 21 m depth) to investigate how ocean acidification (OA) extreme events affect food web structure and carbon export in a natural plankton community, particularly focusing on the keystone species Oikopleura dioica, a globally abundant appendicularian. We found a profound influence of O. dioica on vertical carbon fluxes, particularly during a short but intense bloom period in the high CO₂ treatment, during which carbon export was 42%–64% higher than under ambient conditions. This elevated flux was mostly driven by an almost twofold increase in O. dioica biomass under high CO₂. This rapid population increase was linked to enhanced fecundity (+20%) that likely resulted from physiological benefits of low pH conditions. The resulting competitive advantage of O. dioica resulted in enhanced grazing on phytoplankton and transfer of this consumed biomass into sinking particles. Using a simple carbon flux model for O. dioica, we estimate that high CO₂ doubled the carbon flux of discarded mucous houses and fecal pellets, accounting for up to 39% of total carbon export from the ecosystem during the bloom. Considering the wide geographic distribution of O. dioica, our findings suggest that appendicularians may become an increasingly important vector of carbon export with ongoing OA.

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Optimizing marine macrophyte capacity to locally ameliorate ocean acidification under variable light and flow regimes: insights from an experimental approach

Published 19 October 2023 Science Closed
Tags: biological response, chemistry, communityMF, communitymodeling, flow, laboratory, light, modeling, multiple factors, North Atlantic, photosynthesis

The urgent need to remediate ocean acidification has brought attention to the ability of marine macrophytes (seagrasses and seaweeds) to take up carbon dioxide (CO₂) and locally raise seawater pH via primary production. This physiological process may represent a powerful ocean acidification mitigation tool in coastal areas. However, highly variable nearshore environmental conditions pose uncertainty in the extent of the amelioration effect. We developed experiments in aquaria to address two interconnected goals. First, we explored the individual capacities of four species of marine macrophytes (Ulva lactuca, Zostera marina, Fucus vesiculosus and Saccharina latissima) to ameliorate seawater acidity in experimentally elevated pCO2. Second, we used the most responsive species (i.e., S. latissima) to assess the effects of high and low water residence time on the amelioration of seawater acidity in ambient and simulated future scenarios of climate change across a gradient of irradiance. We measured changes in dissolved oxygen, pH, and total alkalinity, and derived resultant changes to dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and calcium carbonate saturation state (Ω). While all species increased productivity under elevated CO₂, S. latissima was able to remove DIC and alter pH and Ω more substantially as CO₂ increased. Additionally, the amelioration of seawater acidity by S. latissima was optimized under high irradiance and high residence time. However, the influence of water residence time was insignificant under future scenarios. Finally, we applied predictive models as a function of macrophyte biomass, irradiance, and residence time conditions in ambient and future climatic scenarios to allow projections at the ecosystem level. This research contributes to understanding the biological and physical drivers of the coastal CO₂ system.

Continue reading ‘Optimizing marine macrophyte capacity to locally ameliorate ocean acidification under variable light and flow regimes: insights from an experimental approach’

Feeding in mixoplankton enhances phototrophy increasing bloom-induced pH changes with ocean acidification

Published 14 July 2023 Science Closed
Tags: biogeochemistry, BRcommunity, communitymodeling, modeling, phytoplankton, protists, zooplankton

Plankton phototrophy consumes CO₂, increasing seawater pH, while heterotrophy does the converse. Elevation of pH (>8.5) during coastal blooms becomes increasingly deleterious for plankton. Mixoplankton, which can be important bloom-formers, engage in both photoautotrophy and phagoheterotrophy; in theory, this activity could create a relatively stable pH environment for plankton growth. Using a systems biology modelling approach, we explored whether different mixoplankton functional groups could modulate the environmental pH compared to the extreme activities of phototrophic phytoplankton and heterotrophic zooplankton. Activities by most mixoplankton groups do not stabilize seawater pH. Through access to additional nutrient streams from internal recycling with phagotrophy, mixoplankton phototrophy is enhanced, elevating pH; this is especially so for constitutive and plastidic specialist non-constitutive mixoplankton. Mixoplankton blooms can exceed the size of phytoplankton blooms; the synergisms of mixoplankton physiology, accessing nutrition via phagotrophy as well as from inorganic sources, enhance or augment primary production rather than depressing it. Ocean acidification will thus enable larger coastal mixoplankton blooms to form before basification becomes detrimental. The dynamics of such bloom developments will depend on whether the mixoplankton are consuming heterotrophs and/or phototrophs and how the plankton community succession evolves.

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Planktic foraminiferal resilience to environmental change associated with the PETM

Published 28 June 2023 Science Closed
Tags: abundance, Arctic, biological response, chemistry, community composition, communitymodeling, modeling, North Pacific, otherprocess, paleo, protists, South Pacific

Carbonate-forming organisms play an integral role in the marine inorganic carbon cycle, yet the links 21 between carbonate production and the environment are insufficiently understood. Carbonate production is driven by the abundance of calcifiers, and the amount of calcite produced by each individual (their size and weight). Here we investigate how foraminiferal carbonate production changes in the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern Ocean in response to a 4-5°C warming and a 0.3 surface ocean pH reduction during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). To put these local data into a global context, we apply a trait-based plankton model (ForamEcoGEnIE) to the geologic record for the first time. Our data illustrates negligible change in the assemblage test size and abundance of foraminifers. ForamEcoGEnIE resolves small reductions in size and biomass, but these are short-lived. The response of foraminifersshowsspatial variability linked to a warming-induced poleward migration and suggested differences in nutrient availability between open-ocean and shelf locations. Despite low calcite saturation at high latitudes, we reconstruct stable foraminiferal size-normalised weight. Based on these findings, we postulate that sea surface warming had a greater impact on foraminiferal carbonate production during the PETM than ocean acidification. Changes in the composition of bulk carbonate suggest a higher sensitivity of coccolithophores to environmental change during the PETM than foraminifers.

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Interaction matters: bottom-up driver interdependencies alter the projected response of phytoplankton communities to climate change

Published 9 June 2023 Science Closed
Tags: abundance, biological response, community composition, communitymodeling, globalmodeling, light, modeling, multiple factors, otherprocess, phytoplankton, regionalmodeling, temperature

Phytoplankton growth is controlled by multiple environmental drivers, which are all modified by climate change. While numerous experimental studies identify interactive effects between drivers, large-scale ocean biogeochemistry models mostly account for growth responses to each driver separately and leave the results of these experimental multiple-driver studies largely unused. Here, we amend phytoplankton growth functions in a biogeochemical model by dual-driver interactions (CO₂ and temperature, CO₂ and light), based on data of a published meta-analysis on multiple-driver laboratory experiments. The effect of this parametrization on phytoplankton biomass and community composition is tested using present-day and future high-emission (SSP5-8.5) climate forcing. While the projected decrease in future total global phytoplankton biomass in simulations with driver interactions is similar to that in control simulations without driver interactions (5%–6%), interactive driver effects are group-specific. Globally, diatom biomass decreases more with interactive effects compared with the control simulation (−8.1% with interactions vs. no change without interactions). Small-phytoplankton biomass, by contrast, decreases less with on-going climate change when the model accounts for driver interactions (−5.0% vs. −9.0%). The response of global coccolithophore biomass to future climate conditions is even reversed when interactions are considered (+33.2% instead of −10.8%). Regionally, the largest difference in the future phytoplankton community composition between the simulations with and without driver interactions is detected in the Southern Ocean, where diatom biomass decreases (−7.5%) instead of increases (+14.5%), raising the share of small phytoplankton and coccolithophores of total phytoplankton biomass. Hence, interactive effects impact the phytoplankton community structure and related biogeochemical fluxes in a future ocean. Our approach is a first step to integrate the mechanistic understanding of interacting driver effects on phytoplankton growth gained by numerous laboratory experiments into a global ocean biogeochemistry model, aiming toward more realistic future projections of phytoplankton biomass and community composition.

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Coral adaptive capacity insufficient to halt global transition of coral reefs into net erosion under climate change

Published 18 April 2023 Science Closed
Tags: adaptation, biogeochemistry, biological response, BRcommunity, communitymodeling, corals, Indian, modeling, multiple factors, North Atlantic, North Pacific, otherprocess, primary production, regionalmodeling, South Pacific, temperature

Projecting the effects of climate change on net reef calcium carbonate production is critical to understanding the future impacts on ecosystem function, but prior estimates have not included corals’ natural adaptive capacity to such change. Here we estimate how the ability of symbionts to evolve tolerance to heat stress, or for coral hosts to shuffle to favourable symbionts, and their combination, may influence responses to the combined impacts of ocean warming and acidification under three representative concentration pathway (RCP) emissions scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). We show that symbiont evolution and shuffling, both individually and when combined, favours persistent positive net reef calcium carbonate production. However, our projections of future net calcium carbonate production (NCCP) under climate change vary both spatially and by RCP. For example, 19%–35% of modelled coral reefs are still projected to have net positive NCCP by 2050 if symbionts can evolve increased thermal tolerance, depending on the RCP. Without symbiont adaptive capacity, the number of coral reefs with positive NCCP drops to 9%–13% by 2050. Accounting for both symbiont evolution and shuffling, we project median positive NCPP of coral reefs will still occur under low greenhouse emissions (RCP2.6) in the Indian Ocean, and even under moderate emissions (RCP4.5) in the Pacific Ocean. However, adaptive capacity will be insufficient to halt the transition of coral reefs globally into erosion by 2050 under severe emissions scenarios (RCP8.5).

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Climate change effects on marine species across trophic levels

Published 10 March 2023 Science Closed
Tags: biological response, communitymodeling, crustaceans, laboratory, mesocosms, modeling, mollusks, morphology, multiple factors, predation, review, temperature

Climate change and anthropogenic activities are producing a range of new selection pressures, both abiotic and biotic, on marine organisms. While there are numerous studies that have investigated the response of individual marine organisms to climate change, few studies have focused on differences in organismal responses across trophic levels. Such trophic differences in response to climate change may disrupt ecological interactions and thereby threaten marine ecosystem function. In addition, predation is known as a strong driver that impacts individuals and populations. Despite this, we still do not have a comprehensive understanding of how different trophic levels respond to climate change stressors, predation and their combined effects in marine ecosystems.

The main focus of this thesis is to identify whether marine trophic levels respond differently to climatic stressors and predation. To explore these questions, I have used a combination of traditional mesocosm experiments, together with a statistical method called meta-analysis. I initiated the research by study the responses of marine gastropods at two trophic levels to ocean acidification and predation using long-term mesocosm experiments together with a gastropod-specific meta-analyses. I focused on the amount of phenotypic plasticity in morphological traits of snails when exposed to the two stressors. In order to generalise and test these assumptions among a greater number of marine taxa, I used the meta-analysis approach to investigate the effects of ocean acidification and warming, as well as their combined effects on four marine trophic levels. Finally, to study the individual and combined effects of ocean acidification and predation with respect to inducible defences, I again applied a mesocosm experiment and used blue mussels as a model species.

By using long-term mesocosm experiments and the gastropod-specific meta-analysis on marine gastropods from two trophic levels, I showed that these trophic levels varied in their responses to both ocean acidification and predation. Gastropods at lower trophic levels exhibited greater phenotypic plasticity against predation, while those from higher trophic levels showed stronger tolerance to ocean acidification. Next, by using a meta-analysis, including a large number of species and taxa, examining the effects of ocean acidification and warming, I revealed that top-predators and primary producers were most tolerant to ocean acidification compared to other trophic levels. Herbivores on the other hand, were the most vulnerable trophic level against abiotic stress. Again, using the meta-analysis approach, but this time incorporating only factorial experimental data that included the interactive effects of ocean acidification and ocean warming, I showed that higher trophic levels again were the most tolerant trophic level, and herbivores being most sensitive, with respect to the combined effect of the two stressors. Contrary to previous discussions in the literature concerning multiple climate-related stressors, antagonistic and additive effects occurred most frequently, while synergistic effects were less common and which decreased with increasing trophic rank. Finally, by conducting a fully-factorial experiment using blue mussels, I found that mussels with previous experience contact with predator has developed greater inducible defences than ones without previous experience. However, levels of ocean acidification may mask predator cues, or obstruct shell material, and consequently disrupt blue mussels inducible defence from crab predation.

In summary, marine trophic levels respond differently to both biotic and climatic stressors. Higher trophic levels, together with primary producers, were often more robust against abiotic stress and may therefore be better prepared for future oceans compare species from lower trophic levels. These results may provide vital information for: implementing effective climate change mitigation, to understand which stressors to act on, and when and where to intervene for prioritizing conservation actions.

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Predicting effects of multiple interacting global change drivers across trophic levels

Published 8 March 2023 Science Closed
Tags: biological response, community composition, communitymodeling, metals, modeling, multiple factors, nutrients, otherprocess, predation, review, temperature, toxicants

Global change encompasses many co-occurring anthropogenic drivers, which can act synergistically or antagonistically on ecological systems. Predicting how different global change drivers simultaneously contribute to observed biodiversity change is a key challenge for ecology and conservation. However, we lack the mechanistic understanding of how multiple global change drivers influence the vital rates of multiple interacting species. We propose that reaction norms, the relationships between a driver and vital rates like growth, mortality, and consumption, provide insights to the underlying mechanisms of community responses to multiple drivers. Understanding how multiple drivers interact to affect demographic rates using a reaction-norm perspective can improve our ability to make predictions of interactions at higher levels of organization—that is, community and food web. Building on the framework of consumer–resource interactions and widely studied thermal performance curves, we illustrate how joint driver impacts can be scaled up from the population to the community level. A simple proof-of-concept model demonstrates how reaction norms of vital rates predict the prevalence of driver interactions at the community level. A literature search suggests that our proposed approach is not yet used in multiple driver research. We outline how realistic response surfaces (i.e., multidimensional reaction norms) can be inferred by parametric and nonparametric approaches. Response surfaces have the potential to strengthen our understanding of how multiple drivers affect communities as well as improve our ability to predict when interactive effects emerge, two of the major challenges of ecology today.

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Assessing the influence of ocean alkalinity enhancement on a coastal phytoplankton community (update)

Published 21 December 2022 Science Closed
Tags: abundance, biogeochemistry, biological response, chemistry, community composition, communitymodeling, field, laboratory, mesocosms, modeling, otherprocess, phytoplankton, prokaryotes, South Pacific

Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) is a proposed method to counteract climate change by increasing the alkalinity of the surface ocean and thus the chemical storage capacity of seawater for atmospheric CO₂. The impact of OAE on marine ecosystems, including phytoplankton communities which make up the base of the marine food web, is largely unknown. To investigate the influence of OAE on phytoplankton communities, we enclosed a natural plankton community from coastal Tasmania for 22 d in nine microcosms during a spring bloom. Microcosms were split into three groups, (1) the unperturbed control, (2) the unequilibrated treatment where alkalinity was increased (+495 ± 5.2 µmol kg⁻¹) but seawater CO₂ was not in equilibrium with atmospheric CO₂, and (3) the equilibrated treatment where alkalinity was increased (+500 ± 3.2 µmol kg⁻¹) and seawater CO₂ was in equilibrium with atmospheric CO₂. Both treatments have the capacity to increase the inorganic carbon sink of seawater by 21 %. We found that simulated OAE had significant but generally moderate effects on various groups in the phytoplankton community and on heterotrophic bacteria. More pronounced effects were observed for the diatom community where silicic acid drawdown and biogenic silica build-up were reduced at increased alkalinity. Observed changes in phytoplankton communities affected the temporal trends of key biogeochemical parameters such as the organic matter carbon-to-nitrogen ratio. Interestingly, the unequilibrated treatment did not have a noticeably larger impact on the phytoplankton (and heterotrophic bacteria) community than the equilibrated treatment, even though the changes in carbonate chemistry conditions were much more severe. This was particularly evident from the occurrence and peak of the phytoplankton spring bloom during the experiment, which was not noticeably different from the control. Altogether, the inadvertent effects of increased alkalinity on the coastal phytoplankton communities appear to be rather limited relative to the enormous climatic benefit of increasing the inorganic carbon sink of seawater by 21 %. We note, however, that more detailed and widespread investigations of plankton community responses to OAE are required to confirm or dismiss this first impression.

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Cascading effects augment the direct impact of CO₂ on phytoplankton growth in a biogeochemical model

Published 11 November 2022 Science Closed
Tags: abundance, biological response, BRcommunity, communitymodeling, globalmodeling, light, modeling, multiple factors, nutrients, otherprocess, phytoplankton, predation, temperature, zooplankton

Atmospheric and oceanic CO₂ concentrations are rising at an unprecedented rate. Laboratory studies indicate a positive effect of rising CO₂ on phytoplankton growth until an optimum is reached, after which the negative impact of accompanying acidification dominates. Here, we implemented carbonate system sensitivities of phytoplankton growth into our global biogeochemical model FESOM-REcoM and accounted explicitly for coccolithophores as the group most sensitive to CO₂. In idealized simulations in which solely the atmospheric CO₂ mixing ratio was modified, changes in competitive fitness and biomass are not only caused by the direct effects of CO₂, but also by indirect effects via nutrient and light limitation as well as grazing. These cascading effects can both amplify or dampen phytoplankton responses to changing ocean pCO₂ levels. For example, coccolithophore growth is negatively affected both directly by future pCO₂ and indirectly by changes in light limitation, but these effects are compensated by a weakened nutrient limitation resulting from the decrease in small-phytoplankton biomass. In the Southern Ocean, future pCO₂ decreases small-phytoplankton biomass and hereby the preferred prey of zooplankton, which reduces the grazing pressure on diatoms and allows them to proliferate more strongly. In simulations that encompass CO₂-driven warming and acidification, our model reveals that recent observed changes in North Atlantic coccolithophore biomass are driven primarily by warming and not by CO₂. Our results highlight that CO₂ can change the effects of other environmental drivers on phytoplankton growth, and that cascading effects may play an important role in projections of future net primary production.

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Crustacean decapods are models to describe the general trends of biodiversity according to ocean acidification

Published 3 November 2022 Science Closed
Tags: communitymodeling, crustaceans, modeling, multiple factors, temperature

A remarkable lack of punctual and comparable data on the availability of trophic resources characterizes most studies relating biodiversity and food webs, but decapod crustaceans will help, in this study, finding some peculiar common trends of ecosystems. Structural properties of networks, as statistically investigated, affect their stability and food webs are ultimately considered as complex networks of biotic interactions. Fixed mathematical limits constrain the number of species naturally assembled in a community, even if species composition was progressively modified by climate changes: the biodiversity has space constraints. Consequently, since there is less space at higher latitudes than at lower ones, less species may be predicted to globally co-exist, as the planet warms up and the oceans acidify. Here, according to some key mathematical relationships of networks, we forecast an inverse relationship between connectance (a specific feature of food webs) and species diversity. In this chapter, we will apply these relationships to test a general model of biodiversity trends based on the responses of crustacean decapods to the abundance of feeding sources, in a range of environments variably impacted by O.A. The conclusions reached within this chapter will demonstrate consistent properties characterizing the assemblages of aquatic creatures, and extensible to various structural levels, from single cells to the largest ecosystems.

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Rates of future climate change in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea: implications for coral reef ecosystems

Published 5 September 2022 Science Closed
Tags: adaptation, biological response, communitymodeling, corals, modeling, multiple factors, North Atlantic, otherprocess, regionalmodeling, temperature

Rising temperatures and ocean acidification due to anthropogenic climate change pose ominous threats to coral reef ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and the western Caribbean Sea. Unfortunately, the once structurally complex coral reefs in the GoM and Caribbean have dramatically declined since the 1970s; relatively few coral reefs still exhibit a mean live coral cover of > 10%. Additional work is needed to characterize future climate stressors on corals reefs in the GoM and the Caribbean Sea. Here, we use climate model simulations spanning the period of 2015-2100 to partition and assess the individual impacts of climate stressors on corals in the GoM and the western Caribbean Sea. We use a top-down modeling framework to diagnose future projected changes in thermal stress and ocean acidification and discuss its implications for coral reef ecosystems. We find that ocean temperatures increase by 2-3°C over the 21^st century, and surpass reported regional bleaching thresholds by mid-century. Whereas ocean acidification occurs, the rate and magnitude of temperature changes outpace and outweigh the impacts of changes in aragonite saturation state. A framework for quantifying and communicating future risks in the GoM and Caribbean using reef risk projection maps is discussed. Without substantial mitigation efforts, the combined impact of increasing ocean temperatures and acidification are likely to stress most existing corals in the GoM and the Caribbean, with widespread economic and ecological consequences.

Plain Language Summary

Coral reefs are among the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth, and the coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and the Caribbean Sea are no exception. In this region, coral reefs support vibrant recreation, tourism, and fishing industries. However, climate change, including rising temperatures and ocean acidification, threaten the future health of corals. To asses climate-change related risks to coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, this study uses climate model simulations spanning 2015-2100 to understand future changes in temperature and ocean acidification. Although many regions of the Gulf of Mexico and the western Caribbean Sea will cross the critical coral reef bleaching thresholds by mid-century, we hope that this work will inform and streamline mitigation efforts to protect vulnerable coral reef ecosystems and the valuable benefits and resources they provide to local communities.

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Key Points

Sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) surpass critical coral bleaching thresholds by mid-century in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and Caribbean Sea
The rate and magnitude of SST changes in the GoM/Caribbean more strongly influence future coral reef vulnerability than ocean acidification
Future climate projections with high greenhouse gas forcing underscore the need for mitigation to ensure long-term coral reef preservation

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Role of coral symbiont in coral resilience under future ocean conditions

Published 14 July 2022 Science Closed
Tags: biological response, BRcommunity, community composition, communitymodeling, crustaceans, fisheries, individualmodeling, modeling, multiple factors, North Atlantic, otherprocess, regionalmodeling, reproduction, temperature

Anthropogenic climate change is leading to severe consequences for coral reefs because it disrupts the mutualistic partnership between the coral host and their dinoflagellate endosymbionts (Family: Symbiodiniaceae). Ocean acidification (OA) and ocean warming lead to reduced coral growth, causes coral bleaching, and increases coral mortality. One mechanism of long-term acclimatization to thermal stress by corals is to acquire more thermally tolerant symbiont lineages or increase the proportion of thermally tolerant lineages in the symbiont community. Using a combination of field and long-term mesocosm experiments this research investigated the main drivers of Symbiodiniaceae community composition in some of the main corals in Hawai‘i. The first chapter elucidates the baseline symbiont community composition of 600 colonies of Montipora capitata sampled from 30 reefs across the range of environmental conditions that occur in Kāne‘ohe Bay. Symbiodiniaceae community differed markedly across sites, with M. capitata in the most open-ocean (northern) site hosting few or none of the genus Durusdinium, whereas individuals at other sites had a mix of Durusdinium and Cladocopium. The second chapter then investigates how the symbiont composition of those same individually marked colonies responded to the 2019 bleaching event. The relative proportion of the heat-tolerant symbiont Durusdinium increased in most parts of the bay, but despite this significant increase in abundance, the overall algal symbiont community composition was largely unchanged. Rather than bleaching stress, symbiont community composition was driven by environmentally designated regions across the bay, and remained differentiated and similar to pre-bleaching composition. Among measured variables, depth and variability in temperature were the most significant drivers of Symbiodiniaceae community composition among sites, regardless of bleaching intensity or change in relative proportion of Durusdinium. The final chapter investigates the role of specificity in the symbiont community composition for eight of the main Hawaiian corals sampled from six different locations around O‘ahu. Corals were then maintained for ~2.5 years under temperature and acidification conditions predicted by the end of the century in a mesocosm experiment to determine the response of their symbiont communities to climate change and test for environmental memory. Symbiodiniaceae communities were highly specific in each of the eight coral species-, and site-specific differences in community composition were lost by the end of the experiment in the common garden ambient treatment. Future ocean conditions lead to an increase in stress resilient symbionts (e.g., Durusdinium) in some species, whereas others became more vulnerable to the infection of opportunistic symbionts (e.g., Symbiodinium or Breviolum). Temperature was found to be the main driver of change, whereas there was no significant effect of acidification on symbiont community composition. Provenance of corals mattered, because corals from some locations responded differently than conspecifics from other locations confirming an environmental memory effect. Together these results highlight the complexity in predicting coral response to future ocean conditions. Algal symbiont community composition of corals changes in response to their environment, and that this response is dependent on both the coral species and their site of origin, highlighting the role of symbiont specificity and environmental memory in shaping coral resilience.

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Marine gastropods at higher trophic level show stronger tolerance to ocean acidification

Published 8 July 2022 Science Closed
Tags: biological response, communitymodeling, laboratory, mesocosms, modeling, mollusks, morphology, multiple factors, predation

Climate change and anthropogenic activities are producing a range of new selection pressures, both abiotic and biotic, on marine organisms. Although it is known that climate change can differentially affect fitness-related traits at different trophic levels of the food web, it is not clear if different trophic levels will respond via phenotypic plasticity in the form of maintenance of phenotypes in the face of abiotic and biotic environmental stress similarly. To answer this question, we combined a mesocosm experiment (120 days) using a food web comprising three gastropod species from two trophic levels (grazers and meso-predators) and a meta-analysis including 38 studies to address whether different trophic levels exhibit similar phenotypic responses to abiotic and biotic variables. Abiotic (ocean acidification) and biotic (predation) stress significantly influenced body mass, shell mass, shell thickness and shell strength in both grazers and meso-predators in the mesocosm experiment, with the magnitude of OA effects greater on the meso-predator than the grazers; a result supported by the meta-analysis. In contrast, both mesocosm experiment and meta-analysis found that predation risk induced stronger responses in shell morphology for grazers compared to meso-predators. Together, our findings indicate that higher trophic level species are better able to maintain aspects of their phenotype under OA, suggesting that they may show greater tolerance to climate change effects in general, while lower trophic levels express higher levels of plastic inducible defences to maintain function when under threat of predation. By using marine snails as a model, our study provides new knowledge for understanding how changing environmental conditions may alter biological interactions, and increases our understanding of how climate change may affect ecological communities in which gastropods play a key role.

Continue reading ‘Marine gastropods at higher trophic level show stronger tolerance to ocean acidification’

The influence of climate change on marine bacterioplankton communities and greenhouse gases in New Zealand waters

Published 13 June 2022 Science Closed
Tags: biogeochemistry, biological response, BRcommunity, chordata, communitymodeling, field, mesocosms, modeling, molecular biology, multiple factors, phytoplankton, prokaryotes, South Pacific, temperature, zooplankton

Bacterioplankton communities play a fundamental role in the cycling of carbon and nitrogen in the oceans. Cycling of these nutrients by bacterioplankton also contributes to the production of nitrous oxide and methane, resulting in the oceans being a net source of both these greenhouse gases. Climate change is impacting the oceans through warming and acidification resulting in alteration of planktonic ecosystems, via changes in productivity, biomass, and species composition. The response of marine bacterioplankton communities to the direct effects of ocean warming and lowered pH, and to the indirect effects of changes in phytoplankton and zooplankton, has implications for biogeochemical cycling and therefore the production of nitrous oxide and methane. This thesis investigates the impact of both direct and indirect climate pressures by determining the influence of ocean warming and lowered pH on bacterioplankton and the production of methane and nitrous oxide in New Zealand coastal waters. It also assesses how open ocean bacterioplankton communities and dissolved methane and nitrous oxide are influenced by water mass properties and, in particular, how they may be affected by climate-induced changes in the distribution and abundance of salps, a dominant group of zooplankton.

To determine the impact of lower pH and warming on bacterioplankton community, production and abundance, coastal water was manipulated in three mesocosm experiments to projected future ocean temperature and pH. The experiments ran for 18-21 days using 4000-Litre mesocosms filled with coastal water and associated plankton communities, with pH and temperature continuously regulated. High-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene was used to determine bacterioplankton community composition and leucine incorporation was used to measure bacterial production during the experiments. Minor but significant increases in alpha diversity were seen under low pH and warming. However, overall results from the mesocosm experiments indicate resilience to ocean warming and low pH in coastal bacterioplankton communities, with no significant impacts on production, abundance or beta-diversity found. Bacterioplankton communities in coastal sites are likely to experience high natural variability, which may result in lack of sensitivity to projected climate change.

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Continue reading ‘The influence of climate change on marine bacterioplankton communities and greenhouse gases in New Zealand waters’

Enhanced silica export in a future ocean triggers global diatom decline

Published 26 May 2022 Science Closed
Tags: Arctic, biogeochemistry, biological response, BRcommunity, communitymodeling, dissolution, field, globalmodeling, mesocosms, modeling, North Atlantic, physiology, phytoplankton

Diatoms account for up to 40% of marine primary production and require silicic acid to grow and build their opal shell³. On the physiological and ecological level, diatoms are thought to be resistant to, or even benefit from, ocean acidification. Yet, global-scale responses and implications for biogeochemical cycles in the future ocean remain largely unknown. Here we conducted five in situ mesocosm experiments with natural plankton communities in different biomes and find that ocean acidification increases the elemental ratio of silicon (Si) to nitrogen (N) of sinking biogenic matter by 17 ± 6 per cent under pCO2 conditions projected for the year 2100. This shift in Si:N seems to be caused by slower chemical dissolution of silica at decreasing seawater pH. We test this finding with global sediment trap data, which confirm a widespread influence of pH on Si:N in the oceanic water column. Earth system model simulations show that a future pH-driven decrease in silica dissolution of sinking material reduces the availability of silicic acid in the surface ocean, triggering a global decline of diatoms by 13–26 per cent due to ocean acidification by the year 2200. This outcome contrasts sharply with the conclusions of previous experimental studies, thereby illustrating how our current understanding of biological impacts of ocean change can be considerably altered at the global scale through unexpected feedback mechanisms in the Earth system.

Continue reading ‘Enhanced silica export in a future ocean triggers global diatom decline’

Sinking diatoms trap silicon in deep seawater of acidified oceans

Published 26 May 2022 Science Closed
Tags: biogeochemistry, communitymodeling, dissolution, mesocosms, modeling, physiology, phytoplankton, review

The seas are acidifying as a result of carbon dioxide emissions. It now emerges that this will alter the solubility of the shells of marine organisms called diatoms — and thereby change the distribution of nutrients and plankton in the ocean.

The ecologically dominant phytoplankton in much of the ocean are a group of unicellular organisms known as diatoms. Writing in Nature, Taucher et al. present a study that uses a combination of experimental, observational and modelling approaches to examine how the diatom-driven effects of ocean acidification — a consequence of rising carbon dioxide concentrations in seawater — will affect biogeochemical cycles. The separate lines of evidence suggest that ocean acidification will have far-reaching effects on the export of elements to the deep ocean.

Diatoms are highly efficient at converting dissolved CO₂ into organic carbon through photosynthesis, whereupon this organic carbon becomes incorporated into particles that sink rapidly to the deep ocean. Diatoms therefore serve as primary engines of a ‘biological pump’ that exports carbon to the deep ocean for sequestration. Each diatom cell is enclosed in a shell of silica (SiO₂, where Si is silicon), and the solubility of the silicon in this biomineral is pH-sensitive — it becomes less soluble as seawater acidity rises. Although these features of diatoms are familiar to marine scientists, their combined implications for future biogeochemical cycles in the context of ocean acidification had not been explored.

Enter Taucher and colleagues. They carried out a series of five experiments in various parts of the ocean in which natural phytoplankton communities were grown in large enclosures (with volumes of 35–75 cubic metres) known as mesocosms, which simulated future ocean acidification. When the authors measured the elemental composition of the diatom-derived debris at the bottom of the mesocosms, they observed much higher ratios of silicon to nitrogen than the ratios of particles suspended near the surface. This suggested that, at low seawater pH, diatom silica shells were dissolving much more slowly than nitrogen-containing compounds in the same sinking material. In other words, silicon was being exported from the surface to deeper waters preferentially to nitrogen. The authors validated this finding using records of silicon-to-nitrogen ratios in sinking biological detritus in the open ocean, measured as a function of seawater pH, and obtained from particle-collecting sediment traps deployed by research vessels.

Continue reading ‘Sinking diatoms trap silicon in deep seawater of acidified oceans’

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