A 120-year record of resilience to environmental change in brachiopods. ...

• Main Authors: Cross, Emma L, Harper, Elizabeth M, Peck, Lloyd S
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2018
• Subjects: climate change; global warming; museum specimens; ocean acidification; shell characteristics; Acclimatization; Animals; Climate Change; Environmental Monitoring; Invertebrates; Museums; Oceans and Seas; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.22136; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/274984

The inability of organisms to cope in changing environments poses a major threat to their survival. Rising carbon dioxide concentrations, recently exceeding 400 μatm, are rapidly warming and acidifying our oceans. Current understanding of organism responses to this environmental phenomenon is based mainly on relatively short- to medium-term laboratory and field experiments, which cannot evaluate the potential for long-term acclimation and adaptation, the processes identified as most important to confer resistance. Here, we present data from a novel approach that assesses responses over a centennial timescale showing remarkable resilience to change in a species predicted to be vulnerable. Utilising museum collections allows the assessment of how organisms have coped with past environmental change. It also provides a historical reference for future climate change responses. We evaluated a unique specimen collection of a single species of brachiopod (Calloria inconspicua) collected every decade from 1900 to ...