Abstract
CO2 seeps in coral reefs were used as natural laboratories to study the impacts of ocean acidification on the pontellid copepod, Labidocera spp. Pontellid abundances were reduced by ∼70% under high-CO2 conditions. Biological parameters and substratum preferences of the copepods were explored to determine the underlying causes of such reduced abundances. Stage- and sex-specific copepod lengths, feeding ability, and egg development were unaffected by ocean acidification, thus changes in these physiological parameters were not the driving factor for reduced abundances under high-CO2 exposure. Labidocera spp. are demersal copepods, hence they live amongst reef substrata during the day and emerge into the water column at night. Deployments of emergence traps showed that their preferred reef substrata at control sites were coral rubble, macro algae, and turf algae. However, under high-CO2 conditions they no longer had an association with any specific substrata. Results from this study indicate that even though the biology of a copepod might be unaffected by high-CO2, Labidocera spp. are highly vulnerable to ocean acidification.
Highlights
Copepods are microscopic crustaceans that dominate most seawater and freshwater zooplankton communities [1,2], from the tropics to the poles [3]
Volcanic CO2 seeps create conditions to study in situ changes to ocean acidification (OA) for fully acclimatized groups of organisms in their natural habitat, i.e., under natural levels of food and substratum availability, predation, currents, temperature and light, and unaltered capacity for nocturnal migration
We have shown before that total abundances of zooplankton residing in coral reefs may be reduced in response to OA, with some species-specific differences in the severity of responses between taxa [28]
Summary
Copepods are microscopic crustaceans that dominate most seawater and freshwater zooplankton communities [1,2], from the tropics to the poles [3]. They have a wide range of morphologies and behaviors [4], and play an important ecological role in aquatic food chains. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere gets absorbed by surface waters in the ocean and changes its chemistry [7,8]. The addition of carbon dioxide limits the amount of available carbonate ions in the water column and reduces seawater pH, in a process called ocean acidification (OA) [9,10,11].
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