2007/12/28 by Anneli Ehlers, Boris Worm, TBH Reusch · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Biodiversity #Biology #Climate change #Coastal wetland ecosystem dynamics #Ecology #Ecosystem #Effects of global warming on oceans #Environmental science #Geography #Global warming #Marine Biology and Ecology Research #Marine and coastal plant biology #Mesocosm #Oceanography #Seagrass #Zostera marina
paper · doi:10.3354/meps07369
openalex publication_date 2007/12/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Effects of global warming on marine ecosystems are far less understood than they are in terrestrial environments. Macrophyte-based coastal ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to global warming, because they often lack species redundancy. We tested whether summer heat waves have negative effects on an ecologically important ecosystem engineer, the eelgrass Zostera marina L., and whether high genotypic diversity may provide resilience in the face of climatic extremes. In a mesocosm experiment, we manipulated genotypic diversity of eelgrass patches fully crossed with water temperature (control vs. temperature stress) over 5 mo. We found a strong negative effect of warming and a positive effect of genotypic diversity on shoot densities of eelgrass. These results suggest that eelgrass meadows and associated ecosystem services will be negatively affected by predicted increases in summer temperature extremes. Genotypic diversity may provide critical response diversity for maintaining seagrass ecosystem functioning, and for adaptation to environmental change.