Meeting Abstract
S9-1.6 Monday, Jan. 7 Energy homeostasis as a tool to integrate the effects of multiple stressors in animals SOKOLOVA, Inna; University of North Carolina at Charlotte isokolov@uncc.edu
Energy balance plays a key role in survival and stress tolerance of all organisms due to the need to balance energy demand with sufficient energy supply for survival. In animals, both the amount of available energy (through food uptake and assimilation), as well as the capacity of metabolic energy conversions and ATP synthesis are limited resulting in the trade-offs between the energy fluxes that support different fitness-related processes. Environmental stress can result in the negative shifts of energy balance due to the increased metabolic demand for stress protection and damage repair, stress-induced damage to the organismal functions such as food and oxygen uptake and delivery and/or impaired cellular metabolic capacity. These shifts have direct consequences for the organism’s fitness due to the reduced aerobic scope available for growth, reproduction and/or survival. Thus, studies of the energy balance provide a common yardstick to compare and integrate the effects of multiple stressors regardless of their nature and molecular mechanisms, and to predict the ecological consequences of these effects. Bioenergetic thresholds can also be used to distinguish between the moderate stress when the long-term survival of the organisms and their populations is possible albeit at the expense of the reduced growth and reproduction, and the extreme stress incompatible with the long-term survival. Here I present the general concept of energy-limited stress tolerance in animals, describe the bioenergetic markers useful in distinguishing between the moderate and extreme stress exposures and illustrate the applicability of this concept to integrate of the interactive effects of multiple stressors using an example of marine bivalves exposed to trace metals, temperature, salinity stress and ocean acidification. Supported by NSF IOS-0921367 and IOS-0951079.
