| Summary: | Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2022 Marine bivalves are ecologically important, providing ecosystem services like filtering water, stabilizing substrate, and creating hard structure for epibionts. Cultured bivalves are also economically important, supporting thousands of aquaculture jobs nationwide and providing valuable protein sources for our growing human population. However, recent shifts in the environment such as temperature, ocean acidification, hypoxia, and extreme environmental variation have greatly affected bivalve physiology, reproduction, and survival across multiple lifestages. Bivalves in the Northeast Pacific are increasingly vulnerable climate change related stressors like intensifying upwelling and weather extremes, defined stratification, and unique geography which causes distinct spatial and seasonal variation. I seek to investigate if higher degrees of phenotypic plasticity and parental carryover will have the potential to improve bivalve’s fitness and tolerance as climate change progresses. My goal is to evaluate plastic capacity by taking a multi-method approach to assessing the physiological metrics of several important bivalve species, using both field and laboratory experiments. Early lifestages are greatly influenced by parental environmental history leading to carryover effects, favoring phenotypes that have a higher likelihood of surviving. In addition to natural selection in the wild, commercial and restoration aquaculturists may select for beneficial phenotypes in adults and offspring which would yield the most desirable characteristics. In our experiment, I focus on three different species: the purple-hinge rock scallop Crassadoma gigantea, the Mediterranean mussels Mytilus galloprovincialis, and the Olympia oyster Ostrea lurida. By choosing a suite of native and non-native, inter- and subtidal species, I hope to obtain a broad snapshot of physiological responses to help restore vulnerable species and maximize quality of farmed product. Chapter 1 examines ...
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