Drastic effects of climate change on Mediterranean marine forests

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1 GRMAR Institute of Aquatic Ecology, University of Girona, Girona, Catalonia, Spain
2 Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Blanes, Catalonia, Spain
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.26804v2
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Conservation Biology, Ecology, Marine Biology, Climate Change Biology
Keywords
Mediterranean Sea, Climate Change, Conservation, Marine forests, Cystoseira
Copyright
© 2018 Verdura et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Verdura J, Vergés A, Santamaría J, de Caralt S, Ballesteros E, Cebrian E. 2018. Drastic effects of climate change on Mediterranean marine forests. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26804v2

Abstract

Macroalgal forests have gone missing in several temperate rocky shores during the last decades, triggering important changes in the seascape. Cystoseira species are some of the main habitat-forming species on shallow water Mediterranean rocky bottoms and follow the same tendency, which has been mainly related to habitat destruction and pollution. Here we suggest that abnormal positive thermal events may have contributed to this widespread Cystoseira decline. Densities and size structure distribution of C. crinita showed a drastic decline on a relict population coinciding with abnormal high summer temperatures. Additionally, we experimentally tested in the laboratory the cause-effect of high temperatures and UV radiation on C. crinita populations. Although, C. crinita was able to resist punctual high temperature peaks, exceptional and maintained periods of high temperatures (28ºC) lead to the death of all individuals, compromising the viability of these populations. Thus, climate change may seriously compromise C. crinita stands and act synergically with historical drivers of macroalgal decline such as pollution, habitat destruction and increased herbivorism.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints, where one sentence was changed for a better understanding and the sentence with reference to funding was deleted.