Short-term responses to ocean acidification: effects on relative abundance of eukaryotic plankton from the tropical Timor Sea

• Published in: Marine Ecology Progress Series
• Main Authors: Rahlff, J., Khodami, S., Voskuhl, L., Humphreys, M., Stolle, C., Martínez-Arbizu, P., Wurl, O., Ribas-Ribas, M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Copepoda [copepods]; Ocean acidification; Copepods
• Online Access: https://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/69/361569.pdf

Anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions drive climate change and pose one of the major challenges of our century. The effects of increased CO 2 in the form of ocean acidification (OA) on the communities of marine planktonic eukaryotes in tropical regions such as theTimor Sea are barely understood. Here, we show the effects of high CO 2 (mean ± SD p CO 2 = 1823 ± 161 μatm and pH T = 7.46 ± 0.05) versus in situ CO 2 (504 ± 42 µatm, 7.95 ± 0.04) seawater on the community composition of marine planktonic eukaryotes after 3 and 48 h of treatment exposure in a shipboard microcosm experiment. Illumina sequencing of the V9 hypervariable region of 18S rRNA (gene) was used to study the eukaryotic community composition. Increased CO 2 significantly suppressed the relative abundances of different eukaryotic operational taxonomic units (OTUs), including important primary producers, although the chlorophyll a concentration remained constant. OA effects on eukaryotes were consistent between total (DNA-based) and active (cDNA-based) taxa after 48 h, e.g. for the diatoms Trieres chinensis and Stephanopyxis turris. Effects of OA on the relative abundances of OTUs were often species- or even ecotype-specific, and the incubation selectively allowed for detection of the OA-sensitive OTUs that benefitted the most from incubation in a closed bottle, as containment effects on the community structure were evident after 48 h. Many OTUs were adversely affected by sudden decreases of seawater pH, suggesting high sensitivity to OA at the base of the tropical marine biodiversity and difficult-to-predict outcomes for food-web functioning in the future ocean.