Journal ArticleDOI
A decade of climate change experiments on marine organisms: Procedures, patterns and problems
TLDR
Increased effort is required in five areas: the combined effects of concurrent climate and non-climate stressors; responses of a broader range of species, particularly from tropical and polar regions as well as primary producers, pelagic invertebrates, and fish; species interactions and responses of species assemblages; and increasing realism in experiments through broad-scale observations and field experiments.Abstract:
The first decade of the new millennium saw a flurry of experiments to establish a mechanistic understanding of how climate change might transform the global biota, including marine organisms. However, the biophysical properties of the marine environment impose challenges to experiments, which can weaken their inference space. To facilitate strengthening the experimental evidence for possible ecological consequences of climate change, we reviewed the physical, biological and procedural scope of 110 marine climate change experiments published between 2000 and 2009. We found that 65% of these experiments only tested a single climate change factor (warming or acidification), 54% targeted temperate organisms, 58% were restricted to a single species and 73% to benthic invertebrates. In addition, 49% of the reviewed experiments had issues with the experimental design, principally related to replication of the main test-factors (temperature or pH), and only 11% included field assessments of processes or associated patterns. Guiding future research by this inventory of current strengths and weaknesses will expand the overall inference space of marine climate change experiments. Specifically, increased effort is required in five areas: (i) the combined effects of concurrent climate and non-climate stressors; (ii) responses of a broader range of species, particularly from tropical and polar regions as well as primary producers, pelagic invertebrates, and fish; (iii) species interactions and responses of species assemblages, (iv) reducing pseudo-replication in controlled experiments; and (v) increasing realism in experiments through broad-scale observations and field experiments. Attention in these areas will improve the generality and accuracy of our understanding of climate change as a driver of biological change in marine ecosystems.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people
Brett R. Scheffers,Luc De Meester,Tom C. L. Bridge,Tom C. L. Bridge,Ary A. Hoffmann,John M. Pandolfi,Richard T. Corlett,Stuart H. M. Butchart,Stuart H. M. Butchart,Paul Pearce-Kelly,Kit M. Kovacs,David Dudgeon,Michela Pacifici,Carlo Rondinini,Wendy Foden,Tara G. Martin,Camilo Mora,David Bickford,James E. M. Watson,James E. M. Watson +19 more
TL;DR: The full range and scale of climate change effects on global biodiversity that have been observed in natural systems are described, and a set of core ecological processes that underpin ecosystem functioning and support services to people are identified.
Journal ArticleDOI
Effects of climate change on global seaweed communities
Christopher D. G. Harley,Kathryn Anderson,Kyle W. Demes,Jennifer P. Jorve,Rebecca L. Kordas,Theraesa A. Coyle,Michael H. Graham +6 more
TL;DR: The ways in which changes in the environment directly affect seaweeds in terms of their physiology, growth, reproduction, and survival are described, and the extent to which seaweed species may be able to respond to these changes via adaptation or migration is considered.
Journal ArticleDOI
Responses of Marine Organisms to Climate Change across Oceans
Elvira S. Poloczanska,Elvira S. Poloczanska,Michael T. Burrows,Christopher J. Brown,Jorge García Molinos,Jorge García Molinos,Jorge García Molinos,Benjamin S. Halpern,Benjamin S. Halpern,Ove Hoegh-Guldberg,Carrie V. Kappel,Pippa J. Moore,Pippa J. Moore,Anthony J. Richardson,Anthony J. Richardson,David S. Schoeman,William J. Sydeman +16 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review evidence for the responses of marine life to recent climate change across ocean regions, from tropical seas to polar oceans, and find that general trends in species responses are consistent with expectations from climate change, including poleward and deeper distributional shifts, advances in spring phenology, declines in calcification and increases in the abundance of warm water species.
Journal ArticleDOI
Interactions among ecosystem stressors and their importance in conservation.
TL;DR: It is found that synergies are (still) not the most prevalent type of interaction, and that conservation practitioners need to appreciate and manage for all interaction outcomes, including antagonistic and additive effects.
Journal ArticleDOI
Multiple Stressors in a Changing World: The Need for an Improved Perspective on Physiological Responses to the Dynamic Marine Environment
TL;DR: The find that multi-stressor experiments have rarely incorporated naturalistic physicochemical variation into their designs, and the importance of doing so to make ecologically relevant inferences about physiological responses to global change is emphasized.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital
Robert Costanza,Rudolf de Groot,Stephen Farberk,Monica Grasso,Bruce Hannon,Karin E. Limburg,Shahid Naeem,José M. Paruelo,Robert Raskin,Paul Suttonkk,Marjan van den Belt +10 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors have estimated the current economic value of 17 ecosystem services for 16 biomes, based on published studies and a few original calculations, for the entire biosphere, the value (most of which is outside the market) is estimated to be in the range of US$16-54 trillion (10^(12)) per year, with an average of US $33 trillion per year.
Journal ArticleDOI
A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems
Camille Parmesan,Gary W. Yohe +1 more
TL;DR: A diagnostic fingerprint of temporal and spatial ‘sign-switching’ responses uniquely predicted by twentieth century climate trends is defined and generates ‘very high confidence’ (as laid down by the IPCC) that climate change is already affecting living systems.
Journal ArticleDOI
Pseudoreplication and the Design of Ecological Field Experiments
TL;DR: Suggestions are offered to statisticians and editors of ecological journals as to how ecologists' under- standing of experimental design and statistics might be improved.
Journal ArticleDOI
Historical overfishing and the recent collapse of coastal ecosystems.
Jeremy B. C. Jackson,Jeremy B. C. Jackson,Michael Xavier Kirby,Wolfgang H Berger,Karen A. Bjorndal,Louis W. Botsford,Bruce J. Bourque,Roger Bradbury,Richard G. Cooke,Jon M. Erlandson,James A. Estes,Terry P. Hughes,Susan M. Kidwell,Carina B. Lange,Hunter S. Lenihan,John M. Pandolfi,Charles H. Peterson,Robert S. Steneck,Mia J. Tegner,Robert R. Warner +19 more
TL;DR: Paleoecological, archaeological, and historical data show that time lags of decades to centuries occurred between the onset of overfishing and consequent changes in ecological communities, because unfished species of similar trophic level assumed the ecological roles of over-fished species until they too were overfished or died of epidemic diseases related to overcrowding as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg,Peter J. Mumby,Anthony J. Hooten,Robert S. Steneck,Paul F. Greenfield,Edgardo D. Gomez,C. D. Harvell,Peter F. Sale,Alasdair J. Edwards,Ken Caldeira,Nancy Knowlton,C. M. Eakin,Roberto Iglesias-Prieto,Nyawira A. Muthiga,Roger Bradbury,Alfonse M. Dubi,Marea E. Hatziolos +16 more
TL;DR: As the International Year of the Reef 2008 begins, scaled-up management intervention and decisive action on global emissions are required if the loss of coral-dominated ecosystems is to be avoided.