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Latitudinal Clines in Temperature and Salinity Tolerance in Tidepool Copepods
Wai Leong1, Patrick Y Sun2, Suzanne Edmands3
1Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
The Journal of Heredity
|October 10, 2017
Summary
Marine copepods show local adaptation to temperature and salinity, even at small geographic scales. Northern populations are more tolerant of low salinity but less tolerant of high temperatures, potentially impacting future adaptation.
Area of Science:
- Marine Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Environmental Stressors
Background:
- Local adaptation is understudied in marine environments, particularly in species with limited dispersal.
- The tidepool copepod Tigriopus californicus, with a wide distribution and restricted movement, is a model for studying local adaptation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate local adaptation to temperature and salinity in Tigriopus californicus populations across a 20° latitudinal range.
- To determine the geographic scale of adaptive differentiation for multiple environmental stressors.
Main Methods:
- Assessed tolerance to temperature and salinity in 14 populations of Tigriopus californicus.
- Analyzed latitudinal clines in tolerance traits.
- Correlated tolerance with long-term environmental data, including thermal maxima and precipitation.
Main Results:
- Significant adaptive differentiation in temperature and salinity tolerance was observed at spatial scales as small as 5.6 km.
- Northern populations exhibited greater tolerance to low salinity and reduced tolerance to high temperature and salinity.
- Tolerance was more strongly associated with long-term thermal maxima than precipitation patterns.
Conclusions:
- Tigriopus californicus demonstrates pronounced local adaptation to multiple environmental stressors across its geographic range.
- Inverse correlation between hyperthermal and hyposmotic tolerance may hinder adaptation to future environmental changes.
- Understanding intraspecific adaptation patterns is crucial for predicting species' responses to climate change, including range shifts and extinctions.