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Effects of ocean acidification on marine biodiversity and ecosystem function  (summary by Zakery)

3/19/2018

1 Comment

 
Citation:
Barry, J.P., Widdicombe, S., & Hall-Spencer, J.M. (2011) Effects of ocean acidification on marine biodiversity and ecosystem function. Ocean acidification, 192–209.

Purpose:
Barry, Widdicombe, and Hall-Spencer discussed the effects of ocean acidification on marine ecosystem functions and biodiversity, they focused far more on the large-scale issues and implications that controlled experiments cannot show in their limited scale. Large environmental changes can have broad effects on biodiversity, these effects can affect energy flow and other processes by the loss of keystone species who contribute to these processes. Other studies look at the survival of a single species and assumed that changes in the species effects the environment.

Methods:
The paper breaks up the topic into seven board categories and focus on how ocean acidification effects each.

Results:
Acidification of the ocean has effects that goes deeper than just a raise in ph of the water. It effects some of the earths most sensitive habitats. It also means that the servers that we rely on from the ocean will be affected negatively, from fishing to tourism. This problem is larger than most understand.

Significance for Palau:
As an island nation surrounded by the ocean and where fishing is a large part of the local’s life. During a lecture Dr. Rundell talked about how sea cucumbers are a large resource for the people of Palau. Along with the coral reefs many of the marine invertebrates are going to be directly affected by acidification. Any of the invertebrates who use calcium carbonate to make their skeletons it becomes harder for them to make their skeletons strong. This could lead to higher rates of predation and a reduction in prey populations.
1 Comment
Haley Korcz
4/1/2018 06:00:27 pm

I found the blog post on the effects of ocean acidification to be intriguing so I also read this article. Ocean acidification could greatly impact Palau’s culture and food resource availability.
In the section of biodiversity and ecosystem function the article talks about the diversity-stability concept. This concept is essentially if diversity is lowered then the stability of the ecosystem decreases, a direct relationship. For example, if lower trophic level organisms decrease it can support less high trophic level species which could be playing a structural role in the ecosystem or be a keystone species.

This concept reminded me of commensalism and mutualism relationships. A mutualism relationship occurring in Palau’s marine systems would be reef building corals and zooxanthellae which live inside the corals tissue and consume the corals waste then produce products important for the corals growth. If the diversity of zooxanthellae were to lower, then the stability of reef ecosystems would lower. There would be less genetic diversity of zooxanthellae which could affect their ability to colonize reef building corals in times of stress, like acidification. Some species are more likely to be able to tolerate lower pH levels. Without this mutualism relationship reef building corals would decrease in richness and diversity continuing the effect of instability throughout the ecosystem.

Barry, J.P., Widdicombe, S., Hall-Spencer J.M. (2011) Effects of ocean acidification on marine biodiversity and ecosystem function. Ocean Acidification, 192-209.

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    Rebecca Rundell & Jesse Czekanski-Moir

    Co-instructors, 2018

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