Description: We investigated the impacts of predicted ocean acidification and future warming on the quantity and nutritional quality of a natural phytoplankton autumn bloom in a mesocosm experiment. Since the effects of CO2-enrichment and temperature have usually been studied independently, we were also interested in the interactive effects of both aspects of climate change. Therefore, we used a factorial design with two temperature and two acidification levels in a mesocosm experiment with a Baltic Sea phytoplankton community. Our results show a significant time-dependent influence of warming on phytoplankton carbon, chlorophyll a as well as POC. Phytoplankton carbon for instance decreased by more than a half with increasing temperature at bloom time. Additionally, elemental carbon to phosphorus ratios (C:P) increased significantly by approximately 5-8 % under warming. Impacts of CO2 or synergetic effects of warming and acidification could not be detected. We suggest that temperature-induced stronger grazing pressure was responsible for the significant decline in phytoplankton biomass. Our results suggest that biological effects of warming on Baltic Sea phytoplankton are considerable and will likely have fundamental consequences for the trophic transfer in the pelagic food-web.

Description: Coastal marine ecosystems have been under high anthropogenic pressure and it can be assumed that prevalent local perturbation interacts with rising global stressors under proceeding climate change. Understanding their effective pathways and cumulative effects is of high relevance not only with regard to future risk assessment, but also for current ecosystem management. In benthic mesocosms, we factorially tested the effects of one global (combined elevated seawater temperature and CO2 concentration) and one local (nutrient enrichment) stressor on a common coastal Baltic seaweed system (Fucus vesiculosus). Both treatments in combination had additive negative impacts on the seaweed-epiphyte-mesograzer system by altering its regulatory mechanisms. That is, warming decreased the biomass of two mesograzer species (weakened top-down control), whereas moderate nutrient enrichment increased epiphyte biomass (intensified bottom-up control), which ultimately resulted in a significant biomass reduction of the foundation seaweed. Our results suggest that climate change impacts might be underestimated if local pressures are disregarded. Furthermore, they give implication for local ecological management as the mitigation of local perturbation may limit climate change impacts on marine ecosystems.

Description: The plea for using more “realistic,” community‐level, investigations to assess the ecological impacts of global change has recently intensified. Such experiments are typically more complex, longer, more expensive, and harder to interpret than simple organism‐level benchtop experiments. Are they worth the extra effort? Using outdoor mesocosms, we investigated the effects of ocean warming (OW) and acidification (OA), their combination (OAW), and their natural fluctuations on coastal communities of the western Baltic Sea during all four seasons. These communities are dominated by the perennial and canopy‐forming macrophyte Fucus vesiculosus—an important ecosystem engineer Baltic‐wide. We, additionally, assessed the direct response of organisms to temperature and pH in benchtop experiments, and examined how well organism‐level responses can predict community‐level responses to the dominant driver, OW. OW affected the mesocosm communities substantially stronger than acidification. OW provoked structural and functional shifts in the community that differed in strength and direction among seasons. The organism‐level response to OW matched well the community‐level response of a given species only under warm and cold thermal stress, that is, in summer and winter. In other seasons, shifts in biotic interactions masked the direct OW effects. The combination of direct OW effects and OW‐driven shifts of biotic interactions is likely to jeopardize the future of the habitat‐forming macroalga F. vesiculosus in the Baltic Sea. Furthermore, we conclude that seasonal mesocosm experiments are essential for our understanding of global change impact because they take into account the important fluctuations of abiotic and biotic pressures.

Description: Increasing seawater temperature and CO2 concentrations both are expected to increase coastal phytoplankton biomass and carbon to nutrient ratios in nutrient limited seasonally stratified summer conditions. This is because temperature enhances phytoplankton growth while grazing is suggested to be reduced during such bottom-up controlled situations. In addition, enhanced CO2 concentrations potentially favor phytoplankton species, that otherwise depend on costly carbon concentrating mechanisms (CCM). The trophic consequences for consumers under such conditions, however, remain little understood. We set out to experimentally explore the combined effects of increasing temperature and CO2 concentration for phytoplankton biomass and stoichiometry and the consequences for trophic transfer (here for copepods) on a natural nutrient limited Baltic Sea summer plankton community. The results show, that warming effects were translated to the next trophic level by switching the system from a bottom-up controlled to a mainly top-down controlled one. This was reflected in significantly down-grazed phytoplankton and increased zooplankton abundance in the warm temperature treatment (22.5°C). Additionally, at low temperature (16.5°C) rising CO2 concentrations significantly increased phytoplankton biomass. The latter effect however, was due to direct negative impact of CO2 on copepod nauplii which released phytoplankton from grazing in the cold but not in the warm treatments. Our results suggest that future seawater warming has the potential to switch trophic relations between phytoplankton and their grazers under nutrient limited conditions with the consequence of potentially disguising CO2 effects on coastal phytoplankton biomass.

Description: Using outdoor mesocosms we investigated the relative importance of the direct and indirect (here: altered grazing) effects of seawater warming on benthic microalgae in a Baltic Sea Fucus vesiculosus (Phaeophyceae) system during the spring season. Seawater warming had a direct positive effect on microalgal total biomass accrual and growth rate and on total mesograzer abundance and biomass. Moreover, under the existing resource-replete conditions in spring the direct positive effect of warming on microalgae was stronger than the indirect negative effect through enhanced grazing. The outcome of this study contrasts previous observations from the summer and winter season, where indirect effects of warming mediated by altered grazing were identified as an important driver of primary biomass in the Fucus system. In this context, the results from the spring season add mechanistic information to the overall understanding of the seasonal variability of climate change effects. They suggest that the relative importance of the underlying direct and indirect effective pathways of warming and the overall effect on the balance between production and consumption are influenced by the trophic state of the system, which in temperate regions is related to season.