Impacts of ocean acidification on marine organisms: quantifying sensitivities and interaction with warming

  • Posted on: Tue, 03/29/2016 - 18:06
  • By: petert

Ocean acidification represents a threat to marine species worldwide, and forecasting the ecological impacts of acidification is a high priority for science, management, and policy. As research on the topic expands at an exponential rate, a comprehensive understanding of the variability in organisms' responses and corresponding levels of certainty is ...

Death by dissolution: Sediment saturation state as a mortality factor for juvenile bivalves

  • Posted on: Tue, 03/29/2016 - 16:36
  • By: petert

We show that death by dissolution is an important size-dependent mortality factor for juvenile bivalves. Utilizing a new experimental design, we were able to replicate saturation states in sediments after values frequently encountered by Mercenaria mercenaria in coastal deposits (Ωaragonite = 0.4 and 0.6). When 0.2-mm M. mercenariawere reared in sediments at Ωaragonite = 0.4 ...

Short- and long-term consequences of larval stage exposure to constantly and ephemerally elevated carbon dioxide for marine bivalve populations

  • Posted on: Tue, 03/29/2016 - 16:19
  • By: petert

While larval bivalves are highly sensitive to ocean acidification, the basis for this sensitivity and the longer-term implications of this sensitivity are unclear. Experiments were performed to assess the short-term (days) and long-term (months) consequences of larval stage exposure to varying CO2 concentrations for calcifying bivalves. Higher CO2 concentrations depressed ...

Impacts of ocean acidification on marine fauna and ecosystem processes

  • Posted on: Tue, 03/29/2016 - 16:02
  • By: petert

Oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) is altering the seawater chemistry of the world’s oceans with consequences for marine biota. Elevated partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) is causing the calcium carbonate saturation horizon to shoal in many regions, particularly in high latitudes and regions that intersect with pronounced hypoxic ...

Have we been underestimating the effects of ocean acidification in zooplankton?

  • Posted on: Tue, 03/29/2016 - 14:42
  • By: petert

Understanding how copepods may respond to ocean acidification (OA) is critical for risk assessments of ocean ecology and biogeochemistry. The perception that copepods are insensitive to OA is largely based on experiments with adult females. Their apparent resilience to increased carbon dioxide (pCO2) concentrations has supported the view that copepods ...

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