Invasive species and climate change impact coastal estuaries
Biological invasions interact with changing climate in unpredictable ways
Date:
May 5, 2022
Source:
University of California - Davis
Summary:
Native species in California's estuaries are expected to experience
greater declines as invasive species interact with climate change,
according to a new study.
FULL STORY ========================================================================== Native species in California's estuaries are expected to experience
greater declines as invasive species interact with climate change,
according to a study from the University of California, Davis.
==========================================================================
The study, published in the Ecological Society of America's journal,
Ecology, said these declines are expected not only because of
climate-related stressors, but also because of the expanding influence
of new invasive predators whose impacts are occurring much farther up
the estuary.
"Our study found that climate change and biological invasions can interact
in coastal estuaries in unpredictable ways," said lead author Benjamin Rubinoff, a Ph.D. student in the UC Davis Department of Environmental
Science and Policy when the research was conducted. "This increased
risk of predation makes it difficult for native species that are
already dealing with increasingly stressful environmental conditions."
The researchers tested the influence of environmental stress and predation
on sessile invertebrates in Tomales Bay, California during the summer
of 2019.
Sessile invertebrates are animals without backbones that attach to reefs
or seagrasses and barely move, such as bryozoans and ascidians. Their
predators include sea stars, crabs, and snails, among other species.
Estuaries a unique environment In estuaries, changes in salinity and water temperature strongly influence the distribution of many invertebrate
species, from mussels to crabs to sea squirts. These gradients can
be especially steep in the estuaries of California, which are highly
vulnerable to climate change and invasive species.
==========================================================================
In most estuaries, stressful conditions for marine organisms such as
low salinity and high temperature increase as you move inland from
the ocean. With increased stress, native predators typically consume
fewer prey.
But the study found that biological invasions are changing this equation,
since many non-native predators tolerate stress better than native
ones. So highly stressed native prey species are subjected to large
numbers of stress-tolerant invaders that compete with them for resources,
if not consume them.
Stressful situation "The stress gradients typical of West Coast estuaries
are being rapidly altered by climate change," said co-leading author Edwin "Ted" Grosholz, a UC Davis professor with the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and the Bodega Marine Laboratory. "These changing
gradients are scrambling the historical predator-prey landscape,
creating novel matchups and putting native prey at much higher risk
from invaders." Grosholz adds that such changes are hard to predict,
and only experimental studies like this can disentangle the interacting
effects of climate change and invasions on struggling native species.
For the study, the researchers deployed square plates made of PVC with different caging treatments at three locations across Tomales Bay from
June to October 2019. Some plates were protected from predators while
others allowed predator access. At the end of the period, the researchers brought the plates back into the lab and identified organisms using a microscope and determined percent cover.
The study was funded by grants from UC Davis and Point Reyes National
Seashore Association.
========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
University_of_California_-_Davis. Original written by Kat Kerlin. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.
========================================================================== Related Multimedia:
* Sea_lemon,_researcher_and_one_of_the_study_sites_in_Tomales_Bay ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Benjamin G. Rubinoff, Edwin D. Grosholz. Biological invasions alter
consumer-stress relationships along an estuarine gradient. Ecology,
2022; DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3695 ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220505180924.htm
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