Duration vs severity: Understanding invertebrate herbivory under varying warming events

As oceans warm, organisms are experiencing increased thermal stress. Marine thermal anomalies occur in both short-term heatwaves and long-term increases to mean temperatures, but direct comparative studies looking at the impacts of multiple types of thermal anomalies are rare. In ectothermic organisms, studies examining metabolic change after heatwaves show conflicting results to long-term climate change studies, leaving questions as to how species will be impacted across timescales. We tested the hypothesis that moderate experimental warming would increase herbivory rates over time, with a more pronounced increase occurring during long-term warming in comparison to short-term heatwaves. After simulating warming events on red sea urchins (Mesocentrotus franciscanus) and purple sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus), the dominant eastern Pacific kelp forest herbivores, we found that feeding rates and thermal maxima varied by species and length of warming. While short-term heatwave e..., , , # Title: Duration vs severity: understanding invertebrate herbivory under varying warming events

Author: Mary Cortese
Finalized: 10.23.25
All Data was collected at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratory in Friday Harbor, Washington.
More details provided in each data sheet. All weights are in grams

File: \"Heatwave_Data_Compiled.csv\"
About: Data collected during the heatwave experiment with grams of kelp consumed for each individual urchin within the heatwave experiment for each assay.Compiled data from all eight assays. For each date, data is the adjusted consumption data, meaning weight consumed minus the average change in weight of the controls held at the same temperature. See manuscript for more details on kelp controls. Note: NA would mean the urchin died and was not able to consume any kelp. Columns include:

* Number: Urchin number (unique identifier)
* Tank: the number of each large mesocosm tank
* Temp: celsius, the maximum temperature of each tank
* Species:...,