Experimental Acidification Renders Chilean Marine Snails Unable To Detect, Avoid Main Predator

MONTEREY, California, Oct 2 2012 (IPS) - Climate change will ruin Chilean sea snails’ ability to sniff out and avoid their archenemy, a predatory crab, according to Chilean scientists who presented their findings at an international science symposium here. Researchers from Australia also revealed that as the oceans become more and more acidic, some fish become hyperactive and confused, and move towards their predators instead of trying to escape.

“The conditions in oceans are changing 100 times faster than at any time in the past,” said Jean-Pierre Gattuso, a marine biologist with CNRS-INSU and the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche in France. Climate change is making oceans warmer and more acidic. “We are beginning to understand what will happen. I think we can expect the worst,” Gattuso told Tierramérica*.

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Manríquez and colleagues built special tanks where they could regulate the acidity of the seawater. They collected snail larvae from north, central and southern Chile and then reared them in labs for five to six months under various high-acid conditions, Manríquez told Tierramérica. The researchers then put crabs in the tanks with the snails to study their predator-prey interactions under various levels of acidification. At acidity levels expected when the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rises from the current 390 parts per million (ppm) to 750 ppm, the snails immediately try to get as far away from the crabs as they can.

At higher levels of 1,000 to 1,200 ppm CO2, the snails seem confused and wander about aimlessly, often going right towards the crabs. “Good for the crabs, not so good for the snails,” said Manríquez. Those higher levels of CO2 could be reached by the end of the century unless major emission reductions are made.

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http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/10/ocean-acidification-leaves-mollusks-naked-and-confused/