Citation:

Grear, J. AND D. Borsay. Effects of Coastal Acidification on the Life Cycle and Fitness of the Mysid Shrimp Americamysis Bahia. Presented at Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) 2013 Aquatic Sciences Meeting, February 17 - 22, 2013.

Impact/Purpose:

This presentation describes methods for measuring stressor effects, in this case CO2-induced changes in carbonate chemistry (e.g., pH), on populations in controlled laboratory settings. These methods are important for evaluationg ecological implications of organism-level tests of stressors in aquatic environments.

Description:

Most studies of animal responses to CO2-induced ocean acidification focus on isolated individuals or uniformly aged and conditioned cohorts that lack the complexities typical of wild populations. These studies have become the primary data source for meta-analytic predictions about higher level ecological responses in populations and ecosystems. We assessed whether cohort responses were predictive of population responses in the mysid Americamysis bahia to increased CO2 by bubbling CO2-enriched and un-enriched air into the seawater supply in flow-through aquariums. The seawater supply was a continuous tempered input from lower Narragansett Bay (Rhode Island, USA), so effects of diurnal photosynthesis/respiration cycles on carbonate chemistry were conserved in the experiments. The cohort study was initiated with 1-day old groups of individuals, whereas the 5-month population study consisted of intact, stage-structured populations. The CO2 treatment reduced neonate abundance in the cohort experiment but not in the longer term population experiment. This difference suggests that, although standard cohort tests provide critical insight into biological responses, they should be complimented by studies of intact populations where biological responses may be reshaped by competition, acclimation, and evolution.

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