A bioenergetic model explaining growth and lifespan under multiple anthropogenic stressors

Global climate change is shifting species distributions and life-histories.

Together with other anthropogenic pressures such as nutrient loading, this significantly alters coastal ecosystem functioning through changes in e.g. temperature, salinity and primary production as a base for the food-webs.

Emerging patterns on life-history responses of pelagic organisms to these drivers differ from those in the other major marine realm – the benthos.

Using an ambitious combination of laboratory experiments, field transplants and bioenergetic modelling, I will study the effects of these environmental factors on growth, lifespan and population dynamics of the globally distributed benthic bivalve Macoma balthica over a large range of depths and latitudes from temperate to subarctic conditions.

I will also use a unique historical dataset of shell growth and environmental parameters going back over a century to detect long-term, large-scale changes in growth and lifespan.

This project will give vital information on the effects of multiple natural and anthropogenic drivers on a marine key species and its resilience to global and local environmental change. It will also quantify the role of the dominant benthic species in coastal carbon cycling.

On a more fundamental level, it will contribute to resolving the ecological question of the drivers behind the opposing trends of growth and lifespan seen in marine ectothermic animals, one of the largest groups of animals on earth.