Bright spots as climate-smart marine spatial planning tools for conservation and blue growth.

Marine spatial planning that addresses ocean climate-driven change ('climate-smart MSP') is a global aspiration to support economic growth, food security and ecosystem sustainability. Ocean climate change ('CC') modelling may become a key decision-support tool for MSP, but traditional modelling analysis and communication challenges prevent their broad uptake. We employed MSP-specific ocean climate modelling analyses to inform a real-life MSP process; addressing how nature conservation and fisheries could be adapted to CC.

Marine Microbial Gene Abundance and Community Composition in Response to Ocean Acidification and Elevated Temperature in Two Contrasting Coastal Marine Sediments.

Marine ecosystems are exposed to a range of human-induced climate stressors, in particular changing carbonate chemistry and elevated sea surface temperatures as a consequence of climate change. More research effort is needed to reduce uncertainties about the effects of global-scale warming and acidification for benthic microbial communities, which drive sedimentary biogeochemical cycles. In this research, mesocosm experiments were set up using muddy and sandy coastal sediments to investigate the independent and interactive effects of elevated carbon dioxide concentrations (750 ppm CO) and elevated temperature (ambient +4°C) on the abundance of taxonomic and functional microbial genes.

Species-specific responses to ocean acidification should account for local adaptation and adaptive plasticity.

Global stressors, such as ocean acidification, constitute a rapidly emerging and significant problem for marine organisms, ecosystem functioning and services. The coastal ecosystems of the Humboldt Current System (HCS) off Chile harbour a broad physical-chemical latitudinal and temporal gradient with considerable patchiness in local oceanographic conditions. This heterogeneity may, in turn, modulate the specific tolerances of organisms to climate stress in species with populations distributed along this environmental gradient.

Does sex really matter? Explaining intraspecies variation in ocean acidification responses.

Ocean acidification (OA) poses a major threat to marine ecosystems globally, having significant ecological and economic importance. The number and complexity of experiments examining the effects of OA has substantially increased over the past decade, in an attempt to address multi-stressor interactions and long-term responses in an increasing range of aquatic organisms. However, differences in the response of males and females to elevated pCO have been investigated in fewer than 4% of studies to date, often being precluded by the difficulty of determining sex non-destructively, particularly in early life stages.

Stage-Specific Changes in Physiological and Life-History Responses to Elevated Temperature and Pco2 during the Larval Development of the European Lobster Homarus gammarus (L.).

An organism's physiological processes form the link between its life-history traits and the prevailing environmental conditions, especially in species with complex life cycles. Understanding how these processes respond to changing environmental conditions, thereby affecting organismal development, is critical if we are to predict the biological implications of current and future global climate change. However, much of our knowledge is derived from adults or single developmental stages.

(1)H NMR metabolomics reveals contrasting response by male and female mussels exposed to reduced seawater pH, increased temperature, and a pathogen.

Human activities are fundamentally altering the chemistry of the world's oceans. Ocean acidification (OA) is occurring against a background of warming and an increasing occurrence of disease outbreaks, posing a significant threat to marine organisms, communities, and ecosystems. In the current study, (1)H NMR spectroscopy was used to investigate the response of the blue mussel, Mytilus edulis, to a 90-day exposure to reduced seawater pH and increased temperature, followed by a subsequent pathogenic challenge.

Environmental hypoxia but not minor shell damage affects scope for growth and body condition in the blue mussel Mytilus edulis (L.).

The effects of short-term (7 d) exposure to environmental hypoxia (2.11 mg O₂ L⁻¹; control: 6.96 mg O₂ L⁻¹) and varying degrees of shell damage (1 or 2, 1 mm diameter holes; control: no holes) on respiration rate, clearance rate, ammonia excretion rate, scope for growth (SFG) and body condition index were investigated in adult blue mussels (Mytilus edulis).

Minor impact of ocean acidification to the composition of the active microbial community in an Arctic sediment.

Effects of ocean acidification on the composition of the active bacterial and archaeal community within Arctic surface sediment was analysed in detail using 16S rRNA 454 pyrosequencing. Intact sediment cores were collected and exposed to one of five different pCO(2) concentrations [380 (present day), 540, 750, 1120 and 3000 μatm] and RNA extracted after a period of 14 days exposure. Measurements of diversity and multivariate similarity indicated very little difference between pCO(2) treatments.

Acute extracellular acid-base disturbance in the burrowing sea urchin Brissopsis lyrifera during exposure to a simulated CO2 release.

We tested the hypothesis that as infaunal organisms are regularly exposed to elevated CO(2), burrowing sea urchins will demonstrate a lower sensitivity to massive CO(2) release than has previously been recorded for epifaunal organisms. Infaunal urchins Brissopsis lyrifera were exposed to CO(2) acidified sea water (nominal pH 7.8 (control), 7.

Bioturbation: impact on the marine nitrogen cycle.

Sediments play a key role in the marine nitrogen cycle and can act either as a source or a sink of biologically available (fixed) nitrogen. This cycling is driven by a number of microbial remineralization reactions, many of which occur across the oxic/anoxic interface near the sediment surface. The presence and activity of large burrowing macrofauna (bioturbators) in the sediment can significantly affect these microbial processes by altering the physicochemical properties of the sediment.

Bioturbating shrimp alter the structure and diversity of bacterial communities in coastal marine sediments.

Bioturbation is a key process in coastal sediments, influencing microbially driven cycling of nutrients as well as the physical characteristics of the sediment. However, little is known about the distribution, diversity and function of the microbial communities that inhabit the burrows of infaunal macroorganisms. In this study, terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis was used to investigate variation in the structure of bacterial communities in sediment bioturbated by the burrowing shrimp Upogebia deltaura or Callianassa subterranea.

Ocean acidification disrupts induced defences in the intertidal gastropod Littorina littorea.

Carbon dioxide-induced ocean acidification is predicted to have major implications for marine life, but the research focus to date has been on direct effects. We demonstrate that acidified seawater can have indirect biological effects by disrupting the capability of organisms to express induced defences, hence, increasing their vulnerability to predation. The intertidal gastropod Littorina littorea produced thicker shells in the presence of predation (crab) cues but this response was disrupted at low seawater pH.