Marine biodiversity loss due to warming and predation: UBC researcher

Media Release | Nov. 28, 2011

Marine biodiversity loss due to warming and predation: UBC researcher

The biodiversity loss caused by climate change will result from a combination of rising temperatures and predation – and may be more severe than currently predicted, according to a study by University of British Columbia zoologist Christopher Harley.

The study, published in the current issue of the journal Science, examined the response of rocky shore barnacles and mussels to the combined effects of warming and predation by sea stars.

Harley surveyed the upper and lower temperature limits of barnacles and mussels from the cool west coast of Vancouver Island to the warm shores of the San Juan Islands, where water temperature rose from the relatively cool of the1950s to the much warmer years of 2009 and 2010.

“Rocky intertidal communities are ideal test-beds for studying the effects of climatic warming,” says Christopher Harley, an associate professor of zoology at UBC and author of the study. “Many intertidal organisms, like mussels, already live very close to their thermal tolerance limits, so the impacts can be easily studied.”

…