Connecting pH with body size in the marine gastropod Trophon geversianus in a latitudinal gradient along the south-western Atlantic coast

GORDILLO, S.; RIVADENEIRA, M.; MALVÉ, M.

JOURNAL OF THE MARINE BIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2016

0025-3154

There is growing concern about the impact of contemporaneous ocean acidification on marine ecosystems, but strong evidencefor predicting the consequences is still scant. We have used the gastropod Trophon geversianus as a study model for exploringthe importance of oceanographic variables (sea surface temperature, chlorophyll a, oxygen, calcite and pH) on large-scale latitudinalvariation in mean shell length and relative shell weight. Data were collected from a survey carried out in 34 sites along1600 km. Neither shell length nor relative shell weight showed any monotonic latitudinal trend, and the patterns of spatialvariability were rather complex. After correcting for spatial autocorrelation, only pH showed a significant correlation withmean shell length and relative shell weight, but contrary to expectations, the association was negative in both cases. Wehypothesize that this could mirror the negative effect of acidification on growth rate, which may cause larger asymptoticsize. Latitudinal trends of body size variation are not easy to generalize using ecogeographic rules, and may be the resultof a complex interaction of environmental drivers and life-history responses.