Meeting Abstract
To investigate the environmental drivers influencing the physiological status of individual Mytilus californianus mussels, we developed a monitoring system to simultaneously record body temperature and valve gaping behavior in the field. Thirty individuals were selected from one of two mussel beds (wave-exposed and wave-protected) that differ in thermal regime. Individuals from each source site were deployed at two locations (near the lower and upper edges of the mussel zone) and in a nearby, continuously submerged tidepool. Following a 23-d outplant period measures of oxidative damage to DNA and lipids and tissue concentrations of potentially thermoprotective organic osmolytes were obtained from each individual. Individual thermal history (mean daily maximum temperature) was positively correlated with oxidative DNA damage. In contrast, lipid peroxidation damage was weakly positively correlated only with the peak temperature in the 24h prior to sampling. Furthermore, thermal history was positively correlated with tissue concentrations of the osmolyte taurine. Source site differences were only apparent in the tidepool site, wherein mussels from the protected source habitat that spent a significantly higher percentage of time with their shell valves open also had higher DNA damage than individuals from the exposed habitat. Overall, these results demonstrate that recent experience contributes to inter-individual physiological variation, although different metrics follow unique kinetics of accumulation and repair and thus respond to environmental stress at different timescales.
