Meeting Abstract
The oceans have absorbed about 26% of the released atmospheric CO2, resulting in changes in ocean chemistry or ocean acidification (OA). Environmental parameters that impact growth and survival, including pH, can vary on short time scales in shoreline systems. It is important to know whether responses to environmental stressors are phenotypically plastic or if different populations have local adaptation to stressful environments. Traditional metrics of the effects of stress integrate over long periods of time (e.g., growth), are a snapshot of animal state (e.g., condition index), or require isolation of animals from their environment (respiration rate). However, infrared and Hall-Effect sensors allow monitoring heartbeat and valve gaping (time spent filtering) with high temporal resolution over extended periods of time, allowing us to detect the immediate metabolic and behavioral responses changes in environmental conditions. Blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, were collected from sites with around Long Island Sound (LIS) with different water quality conditions to test whether mussels from more stressful environments are more resilient to the impacts of OA. We found that mussels from different populations show different stress responses to OA (manipulating aragonite saturation). Mussels from eastern and western LIS had elevated heartbeat rates in response to OA, while animals from central LIS showed no response to even extreme OA conditions, suggesting site-specific resilience.
