Abstract
The responses of marine biota to global ocean change is characterised by multiple environmental drivers that interact to cause non-linear changes in organismal performance. Characterising interactions is critical for us to predict whether multiple drivers will accelerate or mitigate future biological responses. There is now a large body of evidence that drivers do not act independently, a common null model, but rather have synergistic or antagonistic effects on organisms. We review the literature on interactions among environmental drivers such as ocean acidification and warming, and identify three common modes of interaction: physicochemical interactions in the seawater media outside organisms, interactions that operate on organisms directly, for example by altering physiological rates; and interactions that occur through changes in ecosystems, like predation. Interactions can also occur across these levels increasing the number of permutations for interaction, and point to a diverse range of modes of interplay. Identifying the appropriate mode will help generalise interaction types to unstudied contexts.
Highlights
Ocean biota will encounter changes to a wide range of biologically-influential properties, termed here as drivers rather than stressors at local, regional and global scales
The challenge presented by climate change is to tease apart the ramifications of a suite of altered environmental properties on organisms and ecosystems—this has parallels with previous environmental problem-solving such as ecotoxicology (Breitburg et al, 1999), or acid rain (Pfister et al, 2014)—but the scale and complexity of the changes and the challenge to understand it is more daunting
It is becoming increasing clear that the cumulative effects of climate change will be driven by the influence of individual drivers on the biota, but by their interactive effects
Summary
The responses of marine biota to global ocean change is characterized by multiple environmental drivers that interact to cause non-linear changes in organismal performance. Characterizing interactions is critical for us to predict whether multiple drivers will accelerate or mitigate future biological responses. We review the literature on interactions among environmental drivers such as ocean acidification and warming, and identify three common modes of interaction: physicochemical interactions in the seawater media outside organisms, interactions that operate on organisms directly, for example by altering physiological rates; and interactions that occur through changes in ecosystems, like predation. Interactions can occur across these levels increasing the number of permutations for interaction, and point to a diverse range of modes of interplay. Identifying the appropriate mode will help generalize interaction types to unstudied contexts
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