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Ocean warming is increasing organismal oxygen demand, yet at the same time the ocean’s oxygen supply is decreasing. For a patch of habitat to remain viable, there must be a minimum level of environmental oxygen available for an organism to fuel its metabolic demand—quantified as its critical oxygen partial pressure (pO2crit). The temperature-dependence ofpO2critsets an absolute lower boundary on aerobically viable ocean space for a species, yet whether certain life stages or geographically distant populations differ in their temperature-dependent hypoxia tolerance remains largely unknown. To address these questions, we used the purple sea urchinStrongylocentrotus purpuratusas a model species and measuredpO2critfor 3 populations of adult urchins (Clallam Bay, WA [n = 39], Monterey Bay, CA [91], San Diego, CA [34]) spanning 5-22°C and for key embryonic and larval developmental phases (blastula [n = 11], gastrula [21], prism [31], early-pluteus [21], late-pluteus [14], settled [12]) at temperatures of 10-19°C. We found that temperature-dependent hypoxia tolerance is consistent among adult populations exposed to different temperature and oxygen regimes, despite variable basal oxygen demands, suggesting differential capacity to provision oxygen. Moreover, we did not detect evidence for a hypoxia tolerance bottleneck for any developmental phase. Earlier larval phases are associated with higher hypoxia tolerance and greater temperature sensitivity, while this pattern shifts towards lower hypoxia tolerance and reduced temperature sensitivity as larvae develop. Our results indicate that, at least forS. purpuratus,models quantifying aerobically viable habitat based onpO2crit-temperature relationships from a single adult population will conservatively estimate viable habitat.
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Impact of warming on aquatic body sizes explained by metabolic scaling from microbes to macrofauna
Rising temperatures are associated with reduced body size in many marine species, but the biological cause and generality of the phenomenon is debated. We derive a predictive model for body size responses to temperature and oxygen (O 2 ) changes based on thermal and geometric constraints on organismal O 2 supply and demand across the size spectrum. The model reproduces three key aspects of the observed patterns of intergenerational size reductions measured in laboratory warming experiments of diverse aquatic ectotherms (i.e., the “temperature-size rule” [TSR]). First, the interspecific mean and variability of the TSR is predicted from species’ temperature sensitivities of hypoxia tolerance, whose nonlinearity with temperature also explains the second TSR pattern—its amplification as temperatures rise. Third, as body size increases across the tree of life, the impact of growth on O 2 demand declines while its benefit to O 2 supply rises, decreasing the size dependence of hypoxia tolerance and requiring larger animals to contract by a larger fraction to compensate for a thermally driven rise in metabolism. Together our results support O 2 limitation as the mechanism underlying the TSR, and they provide a physiological basis for projecting ectotherm body size responses to climate change from microbes to macrofauna. For small species unable to rapidly migrate or evolve greater hypoxia tolerance, ocean warming and O 2 loss in this century are projected to induce >20% reductions in body mass. Size reductions at higher trophic levels could be even stronger and more variable, compounding the direct impact of human harvesting on size-structured ocean food webs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2121392
- PAR ID:
- 10426459
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 119
- Issue:
- 28
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2201345119
