Environmental controls of black abalone body temperature determine risks of thermal stress and disease

• Main Author: Duncan, Elizabeth A.
• Language: EN
• Published: California State University, Long Beach 2017
• Subjects: Biology
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10263362

<p> Black abalone on California&rsquo;s rocky shores are critically endangered due to overfishing, disease, and increasing environmental temperatures. Risk of thermal stress and disease have been found to increase with variation in body temperature (<i>T</i>_b), yet we lack a clear understanding of the temperature regimes experienced by abalone in the wild. I created a mechanistic heat budget model coupled with long-term meteorological records to identify key environmental controls and expected distributions of abalone <i> T</i>_bs in the field. Overall, thermal stress increased with shore height and was highest for abalone on southwest facing moderately sloped surfaces; in contrast, disease risk was mostly high and independent of orientation at all but the lowest shore heights. Mechanistic approaches such as heat budget modeling enhance our ability to quantify physiological risk to individuals, compare ecological conditions across broad spatial scales, and successfully predict consequences of changing environmental conditions through time.</p>