Ocean acidification effects on mesozooplankton community development: Results from a long-term mesocosm experiment

• Published in: PLOS ONE
• Main Authors: Alguero-Muñiz, Maria, Alvarez-Fernandez, Santiago, Thor, Peter, Bach, Lennart T, Esposito, Mario, Horn, Henriette G., Ecker, Ursula, Langer, Julia A F, Taucher, Jan, Malzahn, Arne, Riebesell, Ulf, Boersma, Maarten
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Ocean acidification; Copepods
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2482808; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175851

Ocean acidification may affect zooplankton directly by decreasing in pH, as well as indirectly via trophic pathways, where changes in carbon availability or pH effects on primary producers may cascade up the food web thereby altering ecosystem functioning and community composition. Here, we present results from a mesocosm experiment carried out during 113 days in the Gullmar Fjord, Skagerrak coast of Sweden, studying plankton responses to predicted end-of-century pCO2 levels. We did not observe any pCO2 effect on the diversity of the mesozooplankton community, but a positive pCO2 effect on the total mesozooplankton abundance. Furthermore, we observed species-specific sensitivities to pCO2 in the two major groups in this experiment, copepods and hydromedusae. Also stage-specific pCO2 sensitivities were detected in copepods, with copepodites being the most responsive stage. Focusing on the most abundant species, Pseudocalanus acuspes, we observed that copepodites were significantly more abundant in the high-pCO2 treatment during most of the experiment, probably fuelled by phytoplankton community responses to high-pCO2 conditions. Physiological and reproductive output was analysed on P. acuspes females through two additional laboratory experiments, showing no pCO2 effect on females’ condition nor on egg hatching. Overall, our results suggest that the Gullmar Fjord mesozooplankton community structure is not expected to change much under realistic end-of-century OA scenarios as used here. However, the positive pCO2 effect detected on mesozooplankton abundance could potentially affect biomass transfer to higher trophic levels in the future Funding: Financial support for this study was provided by the German Ministry of Education and Research through phase II (BMBF, FKZ 03F0655A) and III (BMBF, FKZ 03F0728B) of the BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean ACIDification) project and the Swedish Academy of Sciences. SINTEF Ocean provided support in the form of salaries for author AMM, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. publishedVersion