Heterogeneous environmental seascape across a biogeographic brake influences the thermal physiology and tolerances to ocean acidification in an ecosystem

Aim: Understanding how spatio-temporal environmental variability influences stress tolerance, local adaptation, and phenotypic variation among populations is a key challenge for evolutionary ecology and climate change biology. Coastal biogeographic breaks are natural laboratories to explore this fundamental research question due to the contrasting environmental conditions experienced by natural populations across these regions.

Location: In the South East Pacific (SEP) coast a major break (30º-32ºS) is characterized by extreme natural variability in sea surface temperature (SST) and carbonate chemistry parameters related to temporal and spatial dynamics in upwelling events. Calcifying organisms inhibiting this zone are exposed to marked fluctuations and clines in SST that together with naturally acidified waters can impact their metabolism, calcification and fitness, making them particularly prone to the effects of climate change (e.g., ocean acidification, OA). We investigated to wh...