Data from: Parasitic infection: a buffer against ocean acidification?

Recently, there has been a concerted research effort by marine scientists to quantify the sensitivity of marine organisms to ocean acidification (OA). Empirical data generated by this research have been used to predict changes to marine ecosystem health, biodiversity and productivity that will be caused by continued acidification. These studies have also found that the effects of OA on marine organisms can be significantly modified by additional abiotic stressors (e.g. temperature or oxygen) and biotic interactions (e.g. competition or predation). To date, however, the effects of parasitic infection on the sensitivity of marine organisms to OA have been largely ignored. We show that parasitic infection significantly altered the response of a marine gastropod to simulated OA conditions by reducing the mortality of infected individuals relative to uninfected conspecifics. Without the inclusion of infection data, our analysis would not have detected the significant effect of pH on host mortality. These results strongly suggest that parasitic infection may be an important confounding factor in OA research and must be taken into consideration when assessing the response of marine species to OA.

近年来，海洋科学家们已开展协同研究工作，以量化海洋生物对海洋酸化（ocean acidification, OA）的敏感性。该研究生成的实证数据已被用于预测持续酸化将引发的海洋生态系统健康、生物多样性与生产力变化。此类研究还发现，海洋酸化对海洋生物的影响可被额外的非生物胁迫因子（如温度或溶氧）以及生物交互作用（如竞争或捕食）显著改变。但迄今为止，寄生虫感染对海洋生物耐受海洋酸化敏感性的影响在很大程度上仍被忽视。本研究表明，寄生虫感染可通过降低感染个体相较于未感染同种个体的死亡率，显著改变某海洋腹足类动物对模拟海洋酸化环境的响应。若未纳入感染相关数据，本研究的分析将无法检测到pH对宿主死亡率的显著影响。上述结果强烈表明，寄生虫感染或许是海洋酸化研究中一类重要的混杂因素，在评估海洋物种对海洋酸化的响应时必须将其纳入考量。