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Physiological basis of interactive responses to temperature and salinity in coastal marine invertebrate: Implications for responses to warming.

ABSTRACT: Developing physiological mechanistic models to predict species' responses to climate-driven environmental variables remains a key endeavor in ecology. Such approaches are challenging, because they require linking physiological processes with fitness and contraction or expansion in species' distributions. We explore those links for coastal marine species, occurring in regions of freshwater influence (ROFIs) and exposed to changes in temperature and salinity. First, we evaluated the effect of temperature on hemolymph osmolality and on the expression of genes relevant for osmoregulation in larvae of the shore crab Carcinus maenas. We then discuss and develop a hypothetical model linking osmoregulation, fitness, and species expansion/contraction toward or away from ROFIs. In C. maenas, high temperature led to a threefold increase in the capacity to osmoregulate in the first and last larval stages (i.e., those more likely to experience low salinities). This result matched the known pattern of survival for larval stages where the negative effect of low salinity on survival is mitigated at high temperatures (abbreviated as TMLS). Because gene expression levels did not change at low salinity nor at high temperatures, we hypothesize that the increase in osmoregulatory capacity (OC) at high temperature should involve post-translational processes. Further analysis of data suggested that TMLS occurs in C. maenas larvae due to the combination of increased osmoregulation (a physiological mechanism) and a reduced developmental period (a phenological mechanisms) when exposed to high temperatures. Based on information from the literature, we propose a model for C. maenas and other coastal species showing the contribution of osmoregulation and phenological mechanisms toward changes in range distribution under coastal warming. In species where the OC increases with temperature (e.g., C. maenas larvae), osmoregulation should contribute toward expansion if temperature increases; by contrast in those species where osmoregulation is weaker at high temperature, the contribution should be toward range contraction.

SUBMITTER: Torres G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8207410 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Understanding species' responses to environmental change underpins our abilities to make predictions on future biodiversity under any range of scenarios. In spite of the huge biodiversity in most ecosystems, a model species approach is often taken in environmental studies. To date, we still do not know how many species we need to study to input into models and inform on ecosystem-level responses to change. In this study, we tested current paradigms on factors setting thermal limits by investigating the acute warming response of six Antarctic marine invertebrates: a crustacean Paraceradocus miersi, a brachiopod Liothyrella uva, two bivalve molluscs, Laternula elliptica, Aequiyoldia eightsii, a gastropod mollusc Marseniopsis mollis and an echinoderm Cucumaria georgiana. Each species was warmed at the rate of 1 °C h-1 and taken to the same physiological end point (just prior to heat coma). Their molecular responses were evaluated using complementary metabolomics and transcriptomics approaches with the aim of discovering the underlying mechanisms of their resilience or sensitivity to warming. The responses were species-specific; only two showed accumulation of anaerobic end products and three exhibited the classical heat shock response with expression of HSP70 transcripts. These diverse cellular measures did not directly correlate with resilience to heat stress and suggested that each species may have a different critical point of failure. Thus, one unifying molecular mechanism underpinning response to warming could not be assigned, and no overarching paradigm was supported. This biodiversity in response makes future ecosystems predictions extremely challenging, as we clearly need to develop a macrophysiology-type approach to cellular evaluations of the environmental stress response, studying a range of well-rationalized members from different community levels and of different phylogenetic origins rather than extrapolating from one or two arbitrary model species.

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Physiological basis of interactive responses to temperature and salinity in coastal marine invertebrate: Implications for responses to warming.

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