Abstract
Mortality of fish has been reported in tide pools during warm days. That means that tide pools are potential ecological traps for coastal organisms, which happen when environmental changes cause maladaptive habitat selection. Heat-waves are predicted to increase in intensity, duration and frequency, making it relevant to investigate the role of tide pools as traps for coastal organisms. However, heat waves can also lead to acclimatization. If organisms undergo acclimatization prior to being trapped in tide pools, their survival chances may increase. Common tide pool species (46 species in total) were collected at a tropical and a temperate area and their upper thermal limits estimated. They were maintained for 10 days at their mean summer sea surface temperature +3°C, mimicking a heat-wave. Their upper thermal limits were estimated again, after this acclimation period, to calculate each species’ acclimation response. The upper thermal limits of the organisms were compared to the temperatures attained by tide pool waters to investigate if 1) tide pools could be considered ecological traps and 2) if the increase in upper thermal limits elicited by the acclimation period could make the organisms less vulnerable to this threat. Tropical tide pools were found to be ecological traps for an important number of common coastal species, given that they can attain temperatures higher than the upper thermal limits of most of those species. Tide pools are not ecological traps in temperate zones. Tropical species have higher thermal limits than temperate species, but lower acclimation response, that does not allow them to survive the maximum habitat temperature of tropical tide pools. This way, tropical coastal organisms seem to be, not only more vulnerable to climate warming per se, but also to an increase in the ecological trap effect of tide pools.
Highlights
The tropical species with the highest acclimation response, 1.40 ̊C, was D. argenteus, while the temperate species with the highest acclimation response, 3.35 ̊C, was N. reticulatus, meaning that the species with the lowest CTMaxcontrol were the ones with the highest acclimation response, both for tropical and temperate species (Figs 2 and 4)
In this study it became evident that the vast majority of the tropical species tested had upper thermal limits below the maximum habitat temperature (MHT) of tide pools (Figs 1 and 2), with the exception of three gastropods, the limpet L. subrugosa and the sea snails, M. nodulosa and S. haemastoma
Two of the three species that had an upper thermal limit above the MHT, L. subrugosa and the sea snails, M. nodulosa, presented a decrease in upper thermal limit, after the acclimation period, that placed them below the MHT
Summary
We aimed to test realistic temperatures and we used a dynamic method, the critical thermal maximum, which mimics the natural thermal ramp that occurs in tide pools in summer [23], to determine the upper thermal limits of these organisms, before and after the “heat wave experiment”
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