Meeting Abstract
Species responses to environmental stress have been well characterized across a broad range of taxa. Less well understood are intraspecific variations in stress responses, and how this variation correlates with fitness, both among individuals and across environments. Along the coast of the northern Gulf of Mexico, the two most important axes of environmental variation setting the distributions of benthic invertebrates are salinity and temperature. Both of these are expected to change rapidly over the coming century, with a projected 2.5˚C increase in coastal sea surface temperature and rapid changes in salinity regimes due to changes in rainfall patterns and anthropogenic alterations to coastal hydrology. These changes in the environment will have important impacts of the distributions of benthic invertebrates, most notably the economically and ecologically important eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica). Here, we use comparative transcriptomics to quantify the response to salinity among experimental crosses of the eastern oyster split between low and intermediate salinities in common garden conditions for 14 months. We compare the gene expression response to metrics of fitness (growth and disease status) to identify physiological correlates of fitness across environments. Our results will help to identify which components of the osmotic stress response are adaptive in this species.
