The role of oxygen and other environmental variables on survivorship, abundance, and community structure of invertebrate meroplankton of Oregon nearshore coastal waters

• Main Author: Eerkes-Medrano, Dafne I.
• Other Authors: Menge, Bruce A., Langdon, Chris, Hacker, Sally, Emlet, Richard, Heppell, Scott, Zoology, Oregon State University. Graduate School
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English; unknown
• Published: Oregon State University
• Subjects: Hypoxia (Water) > Oregon > Pacific Coast; Upwelling (Oceanography) > Oregon > Pacific Coast; Marine invertebrates > Larvae > Oregon > Pacific Coast; Marine zooplankton > Oregon > Pacific Coast; Anoxic zones > Oregon > Pacific Coast; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/fx719p87q

The high productivity of Eastern Boundary Upwelling Ecosystems (EBUE), some of the most productive ecosystems in the globe, is attributed to the nutrient rich waters brought up through upwelling. Climate change scenarios for coastal upwelling systems, predict an intensification of coastal upwelling winds. Associated with intensification in upwelling are biogeochemical changes such as ocean hypoxia and ocean acidification. In recent years, the California Current System (CCS) has experienced the occurrence of nearshore hypoxia and the novel rise of anoxia. This has been attributed to changes in the intensity of upwelling wind stress. The effects of some of the more severe hypoxia and anoxia events in the CCS have been mass mortality of fish and benthic invertebrates. However, the impacts on zooplankton in this system are not known. Meroplankton, those organisms which have a planktonic stage for only part of their life cycle, are an important component of zooplankton communities. The larval stage of benthic invertebrates forms an important link between benthic adult communities and planktonic communities. Larvae serve to disperse individuals to new locations and to link populations. They are also food for fish and planktonic invertebrates. This important life stage can spend long periods in the plankton (from days to months) where environmental conditions can affect larval health, subsequent settlement and recruitment success, and juvenile health. This research assesses the role of hypoxia and larval survivorship, and the relationship between individual abundance and community structure of larvae to environmental factors in the field. In laboratory experiments (Chapter 2), a suite of 10 rocky intertidal invertebrate species from four phyla were exposed to low oxygen conditions representative of the nearshore environment of the Oregon coast. Results revealed a wide range in tolerances from species with little tolerance (e.g. the shore crab Hemigrapsus oregonensis) to species with high tolerance (e.g. the California ...