Physiological responses of marine animals towards adaptation to climate changes

Abstract

According to climatic models, the Mediterranean basin will be one of the regions most affected by the ongoing warming trend and increase in extreme events. The Mediterranean is already one of the most impacted seas in the world, where climate change interacts with many other stressors. Coastal lagoons, in particular, represent critical areas for their importance in terms of land use, economic relevance and anthropogenic pressure, and are the main objects of our analysis. A concept emerged in recent studies on climate changes, suggesting that the only environmental signals that matter to an organism are those that the organism experiences. Thus, animal responses may be very different from those expected at a large-scale, and the impacts of climate change can be different according to a number of local/organismal conditions. The present contribution is focused on the effects of climate change-driven factors on animal physiology, considering that physiology bridges the gap between mechanistic molecular understanding and the larger scale ecosystem responses. Indeed, adaptive responses to large-scale perturbations, such as climate change, affect all biological levels but they initially take place at the cellular and individual levels, and are then integrated and translated to upper levels of biological organization. The geochemical features that may influence animals responses are also addressed.