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Photo-physiology and morphology reveal divergent warming responses in northern and southern hemisphere seagrasses

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Abstract

A better understanding of species and population responses to thermal stress is critical to predict changes in their distribution under warming scenarios. Seagrasses are a unique group of marine plants that play fundamental roles in marine environments and provide vital ecosystem services. Nevertheless, previous studies on seagrass thermal tolerance have focused exclusively on a handful of species, with the majority of these remaining virtually unexplored. Moreover, to date, no study has compared the response to thermal stress between northern and southern hemisphere seagrasses. Here, we conducted comparative mesocosm experiments using four seagrass species from the northern (i.e. Mediterranean: Posidonia oceanica, Cymodocea nodosa) and southern (i.e. Australia: Posidonia australis and Zostera muelleri) hemisphere as representative of two different life strategies, i.e. climax (P. oceanica, P. australis) and pioneer (C. nodosa, Z. muelleri). Plants acclimatized to the mesocosm conditions at ambient temperature (i.e. 26 °C) during a 5-week period, were exposed to a simulated marine heatwave (i.e. 32 °C) for 2 weeks. Measurements of plant responses, including photo-physiology, morphology, and pigment content, were performed at the end of the warming exposure. Results showed that warming had no significant effects on photosynthetic performances of northern hemisphere seagrasses while negatively impacted their southern hemisphere counterparts. Similarly, warming favored the growth of northern hemisphere plants, but strongly inhibited the development of southern hemisphere species. Furthermore, photo-physiological and pigment content results suggested pioneer seagrasses better dealt with warming than climax species. Our study provides more insights into the field of seagrass ecology and yields potential implication for future seagrass conservation and restoration activities.

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Fig. 1

[Data were taken from World sea temperature of 2020 (https://www.seatemperature.org/ data assessed on the 29th Nov 2020)]

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Acknowledgements

HN was supported by an SZN Ph.D. fellowship via the Open University. This work was funded by EPIC-SEA Project, Extra-Eu Scientific Research and Cooperation Grant of the SZN, by the project Marine Hazard, PON03PE_00203_1, Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) and by the project Assemble Plus EU-FP7. The authors are grateful for precious support from Peter J. Ralph, Mikael Kim, Nasim Shah Mohammadi, Paul Brooks, Scott Allchin, Susan Fenech, and Kun Xiao (UTS) for the Aus-mesocosm experiment at UTS, Australia as well as Emanuela Dattolo, Alex Santillán-Sarmiento, Ludovica Pedicini and Jessica Pazzaglia (SZN) for the Med-mesocosm experiment at SZN, Italy. Moreover, the authors thank three anonymous reviewers for many constructive criticisms and suggestions.

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Author notes

  1. Lázaro Marín-Guirao, Mathieu Pernice and Gabriele Procaccini have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, 80121, Naples, Italy

    Hung Manh Nguyen, Lázaro Marín-Guirao & Gabriele Procaccini

  2. Dipartimento di Biologia, University of Pisa, 56126, Pisa, Italy

    Fabio Bulleri

  3. Oceanographic Center of Murcia, Seagrass Ecology Group, Spanish Institute of Oceanography, C/Varadero, 30740, San Pedro del Pinatar, Murcia, Spain

    Lázaro Marín-Guirao

  4. Faculty of Science, Climate Change Cluster (C3), University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Mathieu Pernice

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  1. Hung Manh Nguyen
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  3. Lázaro Marín-Guirao
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  4. Mathieu Pernice
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Contributions

Conceptualization: HMN, FB, LM-G, MP, and GP; methodology: HMN, LM-G, MP, and GP; formal analysis and investigation: HMN; writing—original draft preparation: HMN; writing—review and editing: HMN, FB, LM-G, MP, and GP; funding acquisition: FB, LM-G, MP, and GP; resources: MP and GP; supervision: LM-G, MP, and GP.

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Correspondence to Mathieu Pernice.

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Nguyen, H.M., Bulleri, F., Marín-Guirao, L. et al. Photo-physiology and morphology reveal divergent warming responses in northern and southern hemisphere seagrasses. Mar Biol 168, 129 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-021-03940-w

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