The harmful algae, and , elicit stronger transcriptomic and mortality response in larval bivalves () than climate change stressors.

Global ocean change threatens marine life, yet a mechanistic understanding of how organisms are affected by specific stressors is poorly understood. Here, we identify and compare the unique and common transcriptomic responses of an organism experiencing widespread fisheries declines, (bay scallop) exposed to multiple stressors including high CO, elevated temperature, and two species of harmful algae, (aka ) and using high-throughput sequencing (RNA-seq). After 48 hr of exposure, scallop transcriptomes revealed distinct expression profiles with larvae exposed to harmful algae ( and ) displaying broader responses in terms of significantly and differentially expressed (DE) transcripts (44,922 and 4,973; respectively) than larvae exposed to low pH or elevated temperature (559 and 467; respectively).