Abstract
To project how ocean acidification will impact biological communities in the future, it is critical to understand the potential for local adaptation and the physiological plasticity of marine organisms throughout their entire life cycle, as some stages may be more vulnerable than others. Coralline algae are ecosystem engineers that play significant functional roles in oceans worldwide and are considered vulnerable to ocean acidification. Using different stages of coralline algae, we tested the hypothesis that populations living in environments with higher environmental variability and exposed to higher levels of pCO 2 would be less affected by high pCO 2 than populations from a more stable environment experiencing lower levels of pCO 2. Our results show that spores are less sensitive to elevated pCO 2 than adults. Spore growth and mortality were not affected by pCO 2 level; however, elevated pCO 2 negatively impacted the physiology and growth rates of adults, with stronger effects in populations that experienced both lower levels of pCO 2 and lower variability in carbonate chemistry, suggesting local adaptation. Differences in physiological plasticity and the potential for adaptation could have important implications for the ecological and evolutionary responses of coralline algae to future environmental changes.
Highlights
From intertidal coasts to the bottom of the euphotic zone (Johansen, 1981; Steneck, 1986), coralline algae are major foundation species across marine ecosystems and around the world (Steneck & Dethier, 1994)
Growth, photosynthesis, and other physiological parameters, we explored the tolerance of different life stages to high pCO2, and whether different populations were locally adapted to environments with different pCO2 levels
The goal of this study was to compare the performance of different life stages of the alga C. vancouveriensis under different levels of pCO2
Summary
From intertidal coasts to the bottom of the euphotic zone (Johansen, 1981; Steneck, 1986), coralline algae are major foundation species across marine ecosystems and around the world (Steneck & Dethier, 1994). This study compared the responses of different life-history stages of two populations of the articulate coralline algae Corallina vancouveriensis to different levels of pCO2. This alga is an abundant species along the intertidal coast of the California. Relatively little is known about the effects of ocean acidification on early life-history stages of coralline algae (Bradassi, Cumani, Bressan, & Dupont, 2013; Cumani, Bradassi, Di Pascoli, & Bressan, 2010; Kroeker et al, 2012; Kuffner et al, 2007; Roleda et al, 2015) or about the capacity for local adaptation in this important group. We hypothesized that populations of C. vancouveriensis living in environments with higher environmental variability (due to upwelling) and exposed to higher levels of pCO2 would be less affected by similar high pCO2 levels than populations from more stable environments experiencing lower pCO2 levels
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