Warming impacts on early life stages increase the vulnerability and delay the population recovery of a long-lived habitat-forming macroalga

1. Understanding the combined effects of global and local stressors is crucial for conservation and management, yet challenging due to the different scales at which these stressors operate. Here we examine the effects of one of the most pervasive threats to marine biodiversity, ocean warming, on the early life stages of the habitat-forming macroalga Cystoseira zosteroides, its long-term consequences for population resilience and its combined effect with physical stressors.
2. First, we performed a controlled laboratory experiment exploring the impacts of warming on early life stages. Settlement and survival of germlings were measured at 16ºC (control), 20ºC and 24ºC and both processes were affected by increased temperatures. Then, we integrated this information into stochastic, density-dependent integral projection models (IPM).
3. Recovery time after a minor disturbance significantly increased in warmer scenarios. The stochastic population growth rate (λs) was not strongly affected b...