2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting

February 21-26

As anthropogenic influences on marine environments increase, there is considerable scientific and practical interest in understanding how animals will respond. There is increasing awareness, however, that understanding how species will fare requires explorations of the interface between the response of individual organisms to the suite of co-occurring stressors and larger scale variability in exposure and sensitivity. There are strong temporal factors, such as adaptation and seasonality which interact with spatial components, such as connectivity and inter-population variation in environment and sensitivity, that will influence the capacity of a species as a whole to cope with environmental changes. New approaches, including studies of seasonality, application of time-series datasets, comparative analyses across broad spatial scales, integration of circulation patterns, observations of the influence of migration and dispersal on adaptation responses, and multi-generational experiments will pave the way for this more nuanced understanding of species response. Innovative multidisciplinary approaches require opportunities for researchers approaching these larger scale problems to interact, cross-fertilizing ideas. This session thus aims to bring together studies applying a number of disciplines to characterize the influence of temporal and spatial variation on the genetics, ecology and physiology of marine animals, particularly in the context of changing physical and chemical landscapes.

• PC - Past, Present and Future Climate