Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
• Related Publications
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Project Information
• Funding

Detailed methods are presented in Sasaki et al. 2019 (DOI: 10.1098/rsos.182115). Copepods were collected from two locations across the Northwest Atlantic (recorded in the Pop column). Populations were maintained at the UConn Avery Point campus for over three generations at 18oC, with a 12:12 light:dark cycle and a diet of Tetrasemis sp., Thalassiosira weissflogii, and Rhodomonas salina.

At the beginning of the experiment, eggs were collected and split into two groups, which developed at either 18oC or 22oC (recorded in the Dev column). Once mature, body size measurements were made for healthy males and females (recorded in the Sex column) from the laboratory cultures. Individuals were isolated in a drop of filtered seawater and photographed using a camera attached to an inverted microscope after the water had been removed. 

Body lengths were measured from images as the length of the prosome using Image-J (https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/). All subsequent analyses were performed in R version 3.0.

BCO-DMO Processing Notes:
- added conventional header with dataset name, PI name, version date
- modified parameter names to conform with BCO-DMO naming conventions
- added Latitude, Longitude, and Collection_Date columns

NSF Award Abstract:
Over time, our oceans are becoming both warmer and higher dissolved carbon dioxide. The latter condition is called ocean acidification. The consequences of these simultaneous changes for populations of marine organisms are not well understood. For this project, the investigators will conduct a series of laboratory experiments to determine how two closely-related, common species of Acartia copepods will respond to the interactive effects of warming and acidification and also how well these species can adapt over multiple generations to changing ocean conditions. Since these copepods are key species in coastal food webs, results will have important implications for understanding and predicting how marine ecosystems may respond to future climate change. The investigators will share results from the research through traditional print media, case studies, and video mini lectures. The goal will be for educators of all levels to easily access material on climate change and ocean acidification to include in teaching curricula, in alignment with recommendations for universal design for learning. The project is a collaborative effort between an established professor at the University of Connecticut and an early-career female scientist at the University of Vermont. It will provide training and opportunities for collaborative, interdisciplinary research for two postdoctoral investigators, two graduate students and an undergraduate student.

The project's main goals are: 1) to test the simultaneous effects of temperature and carbon dioxide under current and future conditions on life history traits throughout the life cycle for two key copepod species, warm-adapted Acartia tonsa and cold-adapted Acartia hudsonica; 2) to test for adaptive capacity of both copepod species to a warmer and carbon-dioxide-enriched ocean; 3) to measure the genetic and maternally-induced changes across multiple generations of experimental selection in future conditions in both copepod species, and to identify the genes and pathways responding to selection. The investigators will use experiments encompassing current and projected temperature and carbon-dioxide conditions, will determine the roles of each variable and their interaction on traits that affect the fitness of both copepod species. They will also determine which life stages are most sensitive to individual or simultaneous stress conditions. Through multigenerational selection experiments, the investigators will identify and characterize the mechanisms of copepod evolutionary adaptation. Finally, they will measure genomic changes across the generations under all four experimental conditions to quantify the relative contributions of genetic and maternally-induced change in the physiological and life history traits of copepods in response to near-future climate conditions.