School of Biological Sciences & Environment Institute, The University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
School of Biological Sciences & Environment Institute, The University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Curr Biol. 2017 Oct 23;27(20):R1104-R1106. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.08.057.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO)from fossil fuel combustion is acidifying our oceans [1,2]. This acidification is expected to have negative effects on calcifying animals because it affects their ability to build shells [3,4]. However, the effects of ocean acidification in natural environments, subject to ecological and evolutionary processes (such as predation, competition, and adaptation), is uncertain [5,6]. These processes may buffer, or even reverse, the direct, short-term effects principally measured in laboratory experiments (for example, [6]). Here we describe the discovery of marine snails living at a shallow-water CO vent in the southwest Pacific, an environment 30 times more acidic than normal seawater (Figure 1). By measuring the chemical fingerprints locked within the shell material, we show that these snails have a restricted range of movement, which suggests that they live under these conditions for their entire lives. The existence of these snails demonstrates that calcifying animals can build their shells under the acidic and corrosive conditions caused by extreme CO enrichment. This unforeseen capacity, whether driven by ecological or adaptive processes, is key to understanding whether calcifying life may survive a high-CO future.
化石燃料燃烧导致的二氧化碳（CO）水平不断上升正在酸化我们的海洋[1,2]。这种酸化预计会对钙化动物产生负面影响，因为它会影响它们形成贝壳的能力[3,4]。然而，在自然环境中，受生态和进化过程（如捕食、竞争和适应）影响的海洋酸化的影响尚不确定[5,6]。这些过程可能会缓冲甚至逆转主要在实验室实验中测量的直接短期影响（例如[6]）。在这里，我们描述了在西南太平洋浅水域 CO 喷口发现的海洋蜗牛，该环境的酸度是正常海水的 30 倍（图 1）。通过测量锁定在壳材料中的化学指纹，我们表明这些蜗牛的活动范围有限，这表明它们一生都生活在这些条件下。这些蜗牛的存在表明，钙化动物可以在由极端 CO 富集引起的酸性和腐蚀性条件下建造它们的外壳。这种意外的能力，无论是由生态还是适应过程驱动的，对于理解钙化生物是否可能在高 CO 未来中生存至关重要。
