The metabolic response of marine copepods to environmental warming and ocean acidification in the absence of food.

ABSTRACT: Marine copepods are central to the productivity and biogeochemistry of marine ecosystems. Nevertheless, the direct and indirect effects of climate change on their metabolic functioning remain poorly understood. Here, we use metabolomics, the unbiased study of multiple low molecular weight organic metabolites, to examine how the physiology of Calanus spp. is affected by end-of-century global warming and ocean acidification scenarios. We report that the physiological stresses associated with incubation without food over a 5-day period greatly exceed those caused directly by seawater temperature or pH perturbations. This highlights the need to contextualise the results of climate change experiments by comparison to other, naturally occurring stressors such as food deprivation, which is being

SUBMITTER: Mayor DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4650056 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature