The Eastern Oyster (
Salinity is a major environmental factor that influences the population dynamics of fish and shellfish along coasts and estuaries, yet empirical methods for hindcasting salinity at specific sampling stations are not widely available. The specific aim of this research was to predict the salinity experienced by juvenile and adult oysters (
- PAR ID:
- 10538167
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Estuaries and Coasts
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 8
- ISSN:
- 1559-2723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 2341-2359
- Size(s):
- p. 2341-2359
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Estuaries provide valuable habitat for the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica). Although salinity at a given location fluctuates regularly with tides, upbay and downbay salinity differences span a broad estuarine salinity gradient. Higher salinity habitats downbay support faster oyster growth, whereas lower salinities upbay act as a refuge from predation and disease but slows growth. Two experiments were performed to investigate the effect of salinity, postsettlement salinity changes, and shell morphology on juvenile oyster growth. One experiment used wild oyster spat collected from three distinct Delaware Bay salinity zones that were then transplanted into various salinity conditions in the laboratory, where growth was monitored. Transplanting into low salinity led to decreased growth compared with transplanting to higher salinity, and growth of oyster spat was overall highest for spat from the lowest salinity source. Growth did not differ among shell morphologies. A second experiment used hatchery reared larvae set in one of four different salinity conditions. Those spat were maintained in settlement salinities 22, 16, 10, and 6 for 2–3 wk postsettlement, then measured before fully factorial transfer into new salinity conditions with measurement 3 wk later. Lower final salinity treatments were associated with lower growth, lower initial salinity treatments were associated with faster final treatment growth, and final growth depended on the interaction between initial and final salinity. Therefore, in addition to the effects of acute salinity changes on growth, early postsettlement hyposalinity stress can generate compensatory juvenile oyster growth. As increased freshwater events due to climate change are expected in the Delaware Bay and regionally in the Northeast, these results indicate that nonlinear early life stress responses are important to quantify to better understand oyster stock resilience and plan management.more » « less
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Abstract The eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, forms reefs that provide critical services to the surrounding ecosystem. These reefs are at risk from climate change, in part because altered rainfall patterns may amplify local fluctuations in salinity, impacting oyster recruitment, survival, and growth. As in other marine organisms, warming water temperatures might interact with these changes in salinity to synergistically influence oyster physiology. In this study, we used comparative transcriptomics, measurements of physiology, and a field assessment to investigate what phenotypic changes C. virginica uses to cope with combined temperature and salinity stress in the Gulf of Mexico. Oysters from a historically low salinity site (Sister Lake, LA) were exposed to fully crossed temperature (20°C and 30°C) and salinity (25, 15, and 7 PSU) treatments. Using comparative transcriptomics on oyster gill tissue, we identified a greater number of genes that were differentially expressed (DE) in response to low salinity at warmer temperatures. Functional enrichment analysis showed low overlap between genes DE in response to thermal stress compared with hypoosmotic stress and identified enrichment for gene ontologies associated with cell adhesion, transmembrane transport, and microtubule-based process. Experiments also showed that oysters changed their physiology at elevated temperatures and lowered salinity, with significantly increased respiration rates between 20°C and 30°C. However, despite the higher energetic demands, oysters did not increase their feeding rate. To investigate transcriptional differences between populations in situ, we collected gill tissue from three locations and two time points across the Louisiana Gulf coast and used quantitative PCR to measure the expression levels of seven target genes. We found an upregulation of genes that function in osmolyte transport, oxidative stress mediation, apoptosis, and protein synthesis at our low salinity site and sampling time point. In summary, oysters altered their phenotype more in response to low salinity at higher temperatures as evidenced by a higher number of DE genes during laboratory exposure, increased respiration (higher energetic demands), and in situ differential expression by season and location. These synergistic effects of hypoosmotic stress and increased temperature suggest that climate change will exacerbate the negative effects of low salinity exposure on eastern oysters.
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