Meeting Abstract
As global temperatures continue to rise, it is increasingly important to understand how key physiological processes such as obtaining oxygen from the environment are affected by environmental temperature. Body size is an important consideration because larger organisms need more oxygen but may have a more difficult time obtaining it. If so, larger organisms may be disproportionately sensitive to warming. We are investigating the interactions between temperature, size, and oxygen consumption in pycnogonids (sea spiders), a group that occurs in most marine environments and that contains spectacular examples of polar gigantism. We first worked with a temperate pycnogonid species in the genus Achelia collected at Friday Harbor, WA. To assess whether temperature and body size interacted to influence metabolism, we measured oxygen consumption of animals from a range of body sizes (0.36 to 5.95mg) that were exposed to temperatures of 12, 16, 20, 24, and 28°C. Oxygen consumption increased with both temperature and body size until 28°C, at which point larger animals showed a disproportionate reduction in oxygen consumption compared to small bodied pycnogonids. These data will be compared to similar data collected from pycnogonids in the Antarctic where body size varies over several orders of magnitude and most invertebrates are both highly stenothermal and hypoxia-intolerant. This research was funded by NSF PLR- 1341476.
