Myora Springs is one of many groundwater discharge sites on North Stradbroke Island (Queensland, Australia). Here spring waters emerge from wetland forests to join Moreton Bay, mixing with seawater over seagrass meadows dominated by eelgrass, Zostera muelleri. We sought to determine how low pH / high CO2 conditions near the spring affect these plants and their interactions with the black rabbitfish (Siganus fuscescens), a co-occurring grazer. In paired-choice feeding trials S. fuscescens preferentially consumed Z. muelleri shoots collected nearest to Myora Springs.
Ocean acidification represents a key threat to coral reefs by reducing the calcification rate of the major reef framework builders. In addition, acidification is likely to affect the important relationship between corals and their symbiotic dinoflagellates, and on the productivity of this association. However, little is known about how acidification impacts on the physiology of key reef builders and how acidification interacts with warming.
Ocean acidification and greenhouse warming will interactively influence competitive success of key phytoplankton groups such as diatoms, but how long-term responses to global change will affect community structure is unknown. We incubated a mixed natural diatom community from coastal New Zealand waters in a short-term (two-week) incubation experiment using a factorial matrix of warming and/or elevated pCO2 and measured effects on community structure.
It has been suggested that climate change may promote the outbreaks of diseases in the sea through altering the host susceptibility, the pathogen virulence, and the host-pathogen interaction. However, the impacts of ocean acidification (OA) on the pathogen components of bacterial community and the host-pathogen interaction of marine bivalves are still poorly understood.
Deep-sea species are generally thought to be less tolerant of environmental variation than shallow-living species due to the relatively stable conditions in deep waters for most parameters (e.g. temperature, salinity, oxygen, and pH). To explore the potential for deep-sea hermit crabs (Pagurus tanneri) to acclimate to future ocean acidification, we compared their olfactory and metabolic performance under ambient (pH ∼7.6) and expected future (pH ∼7.1) conditions.