Linxuan Ma1, Yunwei Dong1
1Ocean University of China, China
Mussels, as keystone species in intertidal ecosystems, play a crucial role in providing habitat structures and reducing shoreline erosion. As climate change intensifies, the survival of mussels worldwide is at risk, making it essential to map their thermal risk. However, capturing the thermal stress of global mussels on the tidally influenced coast with hourly accuracy poses a great challenge. Here, we employed a heat budget model (HBM) to hindcast the hourly body temperatures of mussels globally by 1980-2023, and calculated heatwave events based on body temperatures. The results indicate that over the past 40 years, the thermal risk for intertidal mussels on most coasts has increased sharply, with areas influenced by western boundary currents and in enclosed seas more likely to become hotspots. We then constructed a structure equation model (SEM) to evaluate the effects of El Niño, tidal actions, and various environmental factors on body temperatures and heatwaves. The study revealed that on a global scale, local environmental temperatures mainly drive interannual variations in average body temperatures and heatwave durations, while the combined effect of multiple factors influences extreme body temperatures (T99). We highlight the spatial heterogeneity of thermal risks to global mussels and the importance of a comprehensive assessment of various indicators to understand the impacts of climate change on mussel populations.
Biography
Lin-Xuan Ma is a Phd student at the Ministry Key Laboratory of Mariculture under the supervision of Dr Yun-Wei Dong. His research is focused on the prediction of the body temperature of intertidal species and the response patterns of their biogeographic effects. He builds some biophysical models of intertidal species to predict the changes of thermal stress in global warming to reveal more clearly the mechanisms such as range shifting and behavioral adaptations in terms of body temperatures.