Does sex really matter? Explaining intraspecies variation in ocean acidification responses

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from [the Royal Society via the DOI in this record. There is another ORE record for this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/26656 Ocean acidification (OA) poses a major threat to marine ecosystems globally, having significa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biology Letters
Main Authors: Ellis, RP, Davison, W, Queirós, AM, Kroeker, KJ, Calosi, P, Dupont, S, Spicer, JI, Wilson, RW, Widdicombe, S, Urbina, MA
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Royal Society 2017
Subjects:
carbon dioxide
climate change
gender
hermaphroditism
individual variation
systematic map
Ocean acidification
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10871/33286
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2016.0761
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Summary:This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from [the Royal Society via the DOI in this record. There is another ORE record for this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/26656 Ocean acidification (OA) poses a major threat to marine ecosystems globally, having significant ecological and economic importance. The number and complexity of experiments examining the effects of OA has substantially increased over the past decade, in an attempt to address multi-stressor interactions and long-term responses in an increasing range of aquatic organisms. However, differences in the response of males and females to elevated pCO2 have been investigated in fewer than 4% of studies to date, often being precluded by the difficulty of determining sex non-destructively, particularly in early life stages. Here we highlight that sex can significantly impact organism responses to OA, differentially affecting physiology, reproduction, biochemistry and ultimately survival. What is more, these impacts do not always conform to ecological theory based on differential resource allocation towards reproduction, which would predict females to be more sensitive to OA owing to the higher production cost of eggs compared with sperm. Therefore, non-sex-specific studies may overlook subtle but ecologically significant differences in the responses of males and females to OA, with consequences for forecasting the fate of natural populations in a near-future ocean. R.P.E was funded by BBSRC grants (BB/N013344/1 and BB/M017583/1) awarded to R.W.W. W.D was funded by a FSBI Internship Award. A.M.Q acknowledges funding from NERC-DEFRA Marine Ecosystems Research Programme (NE/L003279/1).

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