Physiological and Genomic Mechanisms of Resilience to Multiple Environmental Stressors

Abstract

Though much attention has focused on single environmental variables, most notably temperature and acidification, global climate change is most realistically to manifest as co-occurring and sustained variations in multiple environmental variables or in more frequent, but episodic, fluctuations in environmental conditions. Environmental variability is likely to produce physiological stress to organisms and may supersede the organismic capacity to handle stressor(s) when their rate or magnitude of change is high. Unfortunately, multiple stressor experiments predictive of natural systems remain difficult to perform. Multiple stressors may produce additive, synergistic, or antagonistic effects that are not always predictable from the impacts of the stressors in isolation. Furthermore, physiological variation is harbored within species and individuals, and this natural variation for resistance or resilience to one stressor may be attenuated by co-occurrence of additional stressors. As such, the combination of factors that limit physiological resilience in at-risk populations remains elusive.