The effects of multiple abiotic stressors on marine embryos and larvae  

Authors / CoAuthors

Przeslawski, R. | Byrne, M. | Mellin, C.

Abstract

As the oceans simultaneously warm and acidify, prospects for marine biota are of growing concern. In addition to these global change stressors, marine organisms are also exposed to many other anthropogenic stressors with likely interactive effects, including synergisms in which the combined effects of multiple stressors are greater than the sum of individual effects. Early life stages of marine organisms have been recognised as potentially vulnerable to the stressors associated with global change, but identifying patterns across studies, species and a range of response variables is challenging. In this study, we identify knowledge gaps in research on multiple abiotic stressors and early life stages (embryo to larvae), and we perform a meta-analysis to quantify stressor interactions on early life history stages of marine invertebrates, specifically between temperature, salinity and pH as these are the best studied. Temperature was the most common stressor (91% of studies), while the most common combination of stressors was temperature and salinity (66%), followed by temperature and pH (17.5%). All studies were conducted in the laboratory although four studies also undertook field experiments. Synergistic interactions (68% of individual tests) were more common than additive (16%) or antagonistic (16%) interactions. The meta-analysis yielded several key results: 1) Temperature and salinity synergistically interacted to negatively affect marine embryos and larvae, while temperature and pH antagonistically interact. 2) Embryos are more vulnerable than larvae to thermal and salinity stress but not to pH stress. 3) Survival is less likely to be affected than sub-lethal responses in stress treatments incorporating pH, but there is no discernible pattern in temperature, salinity, and temperature/salinity treatments. 4) Interaction types vary among stressors, phyla, ontogenetic stages, and biological responses. 5) Elevated temperature is generally not a greater stressor than ocean acidification and salinity, but this depends on ontogenetic stage and phylum 6) Ocean acidification is a greater stressor for calcifying than non-calcifying embryos and larvae. We use these results to identify organisms that may be particularly vulnerable or robust to stress associated with temperature, pH, and salinity. Although several clear patterns have emerged from this review and meta-analysis, the challenge now is to develop recommendations for stress ecology experiments in order to facilitate inter-study comparisons, as well as to translate these results to the field.

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nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

79627

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Keywords

• External Publication

( Theme )

• marine

( Theme )

• NERP

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Earth Sciences

• Published_Internal

Publication Date

2014-01-01T00:00:00

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

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geoscientificInformation

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manuscript was begun in 2012 as a collaboration between M Byrne and R Przeslawski. C Mellin was invited to be a co-author in 2013 due to her expertise in modelling and meta-analyses. Final draft was completed in May 2014 and sent to co-authors for final input and GA colleagues for internal review

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