Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, The Laboratory , Citadel Hill, Plymouth , UK.
PML Applications Ltd, Prospect Place , Plymouth , UK.
PeerJ. 2015 Mar 26;3:e863. doi: 10.7717/peerj.863. eCollection 2015.
Extreme climatic events, including heat waves (HWs) and severe storms, influence the structure of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Despite growing consensus that anthropogenic climate change will increase the frequency, duration and magnitude of extreme events, current understanding of their impact on communities and ecosystems is limited. Here, we used sessile invertebrates on settlement panels as model assemblages to examine the influence of HW magnitude, duration and timing on marine biodiversity patterns. Settlement panels were deployed in a marina in southwest UK for ≥5 weeks, to allow sufficient time for colonisation and development of sessile fauna, before being subjected to simulated HWs in a mesocosm facility. Replicate panel assemblages were held at ambient sea temperature (∼17 °C), or +3 °C or +5 °C for a period of 1 or 2 weeks, before being returned to the marina for a recovery phase of 2-3 weeks. The 10-week experiment was repeated 3 times, staggered throughout summer, to examine the influence of HW timing on community impacts. Contrary to our expectations, the warming events had no clear, consistent impacts on the abundance of species or the structure of sessile assemblages. With the exception of 1 high-magnitude long-duration HW event, warming did not alter not assemblage structure, favour non-native species, nor lead to changes in richness, abundance or biomass of sessile faunal assemblages. The observed lack of effect may have been caused by a combination of (1) the use of relatively low magnitude, realistic heat wave treatments compared to previous studies (2), the greater resilience of mature adult sessile fauna compared to recruits and juveniles, and (3) the high thermal tolerance of the model organisms (i.e., temperate fouling species, principally bryozoans and ascidians). Our study demonstrates the importance of using realistic treatments when manipulating climate change variables, and also suggests that biogeographical context may influence community-level responses to short-term warming events, which are predicted to increase in severity in the future.
极端气候事件，包括热浪（HWs）和剧烈风暴，影响海洋和陆地生态系统的结构。尽管人们越来越一致认为人为气候变化将增加极端事件的频率、持续时间和强度，但目前对其对群落和生态系统的影响的理解是有限的。在这里，我们使用定居面板上的固着无脊椎动物作为模型组合，研究了 HW 强度、持续时间和时间对海洋生物多样性模式的影响。定居面板在英国西南部的一个码头部署了≥5 周，以允许足够的时间进行定居和固着动物的发育，然后在中观设施中模拟 HW。复制面板组合在环境海水温度（约 17°C）或+3°C 或+5°C 下保持 1 或 2 周，然后返回码头进行 2-3 周的恢复阶段。为期 10 周的实验重复了 3 次，在整个夏季交错进行，以研究 HW 时间对群落影响的影响。与我们的预期相反，变暖事件对物种丰度或固着组合结构没有明显、一致的影响。除了 1 次高强度长持续时间的 HW 事件外，变暖并没有改变组合结构，有利于非本地物种，也没有导致固着动物群的丰富度、丰度或生物量发生变化。观察到的缺乏影响可能是由于以下因素的综合作用：（1）与之前的研究相比，使用相对较低强度、现实的热波处理；（2）成熟的成年固着动物比新兵和幼体更具弹性；（3）模型生物（即温带污损物种，主要是苔藓动物和棘皮动物）具有较高的热耐受性。我们的研究表明，在操纵气候变化变量时使用现实处理的重要性，也表明生物地理背景可能会影响群落对短期变暖事件的反应，预计未来这些事件的严重程度将会增加。
