By Valerie Perini

With the impacts of climate change already being documented in marine ecosystems, the need to predict and understand how changes will impact these systems across a range of scales is more important than ever. However, this understanding does not come easily, as response to stressors vary across individuals, populations, species, and environments. In order to answer these important questions, a team of researchers led by MSC graduate student Allison Matzelle, and including MSC director Geoff Trussell and faculty member Brian Helmuth, has developed a framework that predicts how marine organisms will deal with various stressors caused by climate change.

In their article describing the framework, recently published in the journal American Malacological Bulletin, the researchers use biophysical and Dynamic Energy Budget models that consider both environmental stressors and species interactions. Their framework integrates the combined impacts of multiple stressors, such as temperature, food availability, and fear of being eaten, in order to predict the cumulative impact these stressor have on organismal fitness. The authors hope the framework will serve as a guide to assist in developing further ideas and experimentation regarding multiple stressors, and how these contribute to organism and ecosystem level responses to climate change.