Impacts of multiple stressors during the establishment of fouling assemblages

Limited knowledge of the mechanisms through which multiple stressors affect communities and ecosystems limits capacity to predict their effects. Less clear is how stressors impact early colonization of newly available habitats due to scarcity of studies. The present study tested whether copper and freshwater input affect colonization of hard substrata independently or interactively and assessed differences in community respiration and total biomass among early stage assemblages which developed under different regimes of copper and freshwater input. While copper influenced effectively the colonization of individual species, freshwater effect was weak or null. Apart from a significant effect on total community composition, the interactive effect between stressors was weak and mainly driven by antagonistic interactions between copper and water flow. Total biomass and respiration of the community studied were not affected by stressors. These findings contradict the expectation that changes in community structure are likely to cause changes in functioning.