Fri, March 13, 2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS RESEARCH LABORATORY (AERL). IOF Seminar Series
Speaker: Jessica Garzke
Postdoctoral Fellow, IOF
Location: AERL Theatre
Climate change may lead to several new challenges for earth’s biota. The most discussed changes during the past years are warming and ocean acidification. Climate change impacts occur in marine pelagic systems and food webs, including zooplankton, the link between primary producers and fish. In particular, changes in biomass, abundance, and diversity have been already observed in studies (field surveys and experiments) but impacts on trophic interactions, metabolism, and physiology are still not fully understood. Besides understanding the effects of single stressors on plankton communities and individual organisms, the effects of multiple interacting stressors on individuals and communities are necessary to understand the complexity of climate change. Integrative experimental studies can show how ocean acidification interacts with warming to mediate the physiology and ecology of plankton communities. Using multi-species community experiments, Dr. Garzke will show the impact of climate change scenarios predicted for the year 2100 on coastal plankton food webs. These experiments highlight that warming and acidification do not affect zooplankton functional traits in the same manner and that such changes have potential consequences for fish.