Salinity and temperature increase impact groundwater crustaceans.

ABSTRACT: Anthropogenic impacts in groundwater ecosystems remain poorly known. Climate change is omnipresent, while groundwater salinization poses serious long-term environmental problems in arid and semi-arid regions, and is exacerbated by global warming. Both are present threats to the conservation of groundwater ecosystems, which harbour highly specialized species, with peculiar traits and limited geographic distributions. We tested the temperature and salinity tolerance of groundwater-adapted invertebrates to understand the effect of global warming and salinization in groundwater ecosystems. We used species representative of groundwater-adapted crustaceans: two copepods (harpacticoid and cyclopoid) and one syncarid, endemic to Australia. Our results show that 50% of the populations died at salt

SUBMITTER: Castano-Sanchez A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7378218 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature