COA Academic Grant Report: Under Pressure: The Physiological Effect of Multiple Stressors on Mytilus edulis

摘要

Intertidal communities face unique challenges brought on by the daily tidal flux and seasonal temperature variation. The specialized adaptations displayed by many intertidal mollusks, such as hypoxia/ anoxia strategies and elevated temperature tolerance, makes them an ideal study system to better understand physiological adaptations in a variable environment (McMahon 1988). While the effects of abiotic factors (such as oxygen availability or temperature elevation) have been studied extensively, little is known about how those environmental stressors work in tandem with biotic stressors such as species interactions. Intertidal communities are complex and dynamic, and different species exhibit differential susceptibility to environmental stress (Somero 2002), so our project sought to elucidate the complicated interplay between abiotic and biotic stressors.