Biological and biogeochemical responses of benthic communities to marine heatwaves - BioHeat

The dataset presents data from a laboratory experiment exploring the
effect of heatwaves of different intensities on benhic bioturbation,
community excretion and biogeochemical cycling of solutes. We tested the
effects of short-term, moderate and strong marine heatwaves on macrofauna
bioturbation and associated solute fluxes as examples of ecosystem
functioning. We also measured macrofaunal excretion rates to assess
effects of temperature on macrofauna metabolism. For this experiment, we
used unmanipulated sediment cores with natural animal communities
collected from a muddy location at 32 m depth in the northern Baltic Sea.
Despite the mechanistic effect of bioturbation remaining unchanged between
the treatments, there were significant differences in oxygen consumption,
solute fluxes and excretion. Biogeochemical and biological processes were
boosted by the moderate heatwave, whereas biogeochemical cycling seemed to
decrease under a strong heatwave.