Predicting Impact of Ocean Acidification on Invertebrates: Energy Budget Flexibility as a Unifying Principle

Invertebrates represent 95% of all animal species and are divided into 38 phyla, 36 having marine representatives and 18 being exclusively marine. It is then of vital importance to understand how near-future climate change, including ocean acidification, may impact marine invertebrates in temperate coral reefs ecosystems.

Study of the impact of ocean acidification on marine species and ecosystems is a relatively new field but the amount of published data is growing exponentially. Most of the published information is based on single-species and single life-history stage (gamete, larvae, juvenile or adult) perturbation experiments and only few studies have considered the ecological scale (only a few studies have employed mesocosms, CO2 vent studies or used modelling). However, there is a common theme emerging from all phyla tested so far: the impact of ocean acidification is extremely species-specific, even in closely related species, and can be population-specific within the same species.

In this presentation, I will summarize the available information highlighting factors that may predict species sensitivity and determine which species will be winners or losers in future oceans.