Seawater carbonate chemistry and hatch time, hatch success, survival, and length of estuarine fishes

• Main Authors: Morrell, Brooke K, Gobler, Christopher J
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2020
• Subjects: Animalia; Brackish waters; Chordata; Containers and aquaria 20-1000 L or < 1 m**2; Cyprinodon variegatus; Growth/Morphology; Laboratory experiment; Menidia beryllina; Menidia menidia; Mortality/Survival; Nekton; North Atlantic; Oxygen; Pelagos; Reproduction; FOS Medical biotechnology; Single species; Temperate; Type; Species; Registration number of species; Uniform resource locator/link to reference; Experiment; Treatment; Hatching time; Hatching time, standard error; Egg hatching success; Egg hatching success, standard error; Survival; Survival rate, standard error; Length; Length, standard error; pH; pH, standard deviation; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide, standard deviation; Calcite saturation state; Calcite saturation state, standard deviation; Aragonite saturation state; Aragonite saturation state, standard deviation; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved, standard deviation; Carbonate ion; Carbonate ion, standard deviation; Alkalinity, total; Alkalinity, total, standard deviation; Salinity; Salinity, standard deviation; Oxygen, dissolved; Oxygen, dissolved, standard deviation; Temperature, water; Temperature, water, standard deviation; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Carbon dioxide, standard deviation; Fugacity of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Fugacity of carbon dioxide in seawater, standard deviation; Bicarbonate ion; Bicarbonate ion, standard deviation; Potentiometric; Calculated using CO2SYS; Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. 2010; Calculated using seacarb after Orr et al. 2018; Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre OA-ICC; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.918928; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.918928

Estuaries serve as important nursery habitats for various species of early-life stage fish, but can experience cooccurring acidification and hypoxia that can vary diurnally in intensity. This study examines the effects of acidification (pH 7.2–7.4) and hypoxia (dissolved oxygen (DO) ~ 2–4 mg/L) as individual and combined stressors on four fitness metrics for three species of forage fish endemic to the U.S. East Coast: Menidia menidia, Menidia beryllina, and Cyprinodon variegatus. Additionally, the impacts of various durations of exposure to these two stressors was also assessed to explore the sensitivity threshold for larval fishes under environmentally-representative conditions. C. variegatus was resistant to chronic low pH, while M. menidia and M. beryllina experienced significantly reduced survival and hatch time, respectively. Exposure to hypoxia resulted in reduced hatch success of both Menidia species, as well as diminished survival of M. beryllina larvae. Diurnal exposure to low pH and low DO for 4 or 8 h did not alter survival of M. beryllina, although 8 or 12 h of daily exposure through the 10 days posthatch significantly depressed larval size. In contrast, M. menidia experienced significant declines in survival for all intervals of diel cycling hypoxia and acidification (4–12 h). Exposure to 12-h diurnal hypoxia generally elicited negative effects equal to, or of greater severity, than chronic exposure to low DO at the same levels despite significantly higher mean DO exposure concentrations. This evidences a substantial biological cost to adapting to changing DO levels, and implicates diurnal cycling of DO as a significant threat to fish larvae in estuaries. Larval responses to hypoxia, and to a lesser extent acidification, in this study on both continuous and diurnal timescales indicate that estuarine conditions throughout the spawning and postspawn periods could adversely affect stocks of these fish, with diverse implications for the remainder of the food web. : In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2019) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation by seacarb is 2020-06-12.