[All-postdocs] Bioseminar HYBRID Christopher Murray

[Ana M Velez]

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Biology Department Seminar
Thursday, March 24, 2022 - 12:00 Noon

Christopher Murray
WHOI Postdoc Investigator

Investigating the Ecophysiology of Marine Forage Fish Under Emergent Anthropogenic Stressors
Marine fish display a remarkable range of plastic responses to behavior and physiology that enable species and populations to persist across large spatial and temporal environmental gradients. Consequently, these capabilities will determine if populations can persist under emergent climate stressors absent rapid evolutionary adaptation. As an experimental biologist, my research combines laboratory studies with field-based observations to better understand the processes that mediate phenotypic plasticity and flexibility under ocean warming, acidification, and deoxygenation.  Much of my work focuses on early life stages which constitute a 'critical window' of sensitivity to environmental stress. In a recent study, I investigated the combined effects of a marine heatwave and coastal acidification on the vital rates of Pacific herring embryos, an essential forage fish in the Salish Sea, to test the key hypothesis that elevated pCO2 compromises rapid thermal acclimation. It is also known that long-term exposure to elevated pCO2 can elicit chronic stress responses in marine invertebrates that increases their susceptibility to pathogenic disease. Yet, studies evaluating the interactions between acidification and disease in marine fish remain scare. In a collaboration with the Western Fisheries Research Center, we investigated how a gradient of pCO2 conditions affected the immune response of juvenile Pacific herring infected with an endemic viral pathogen, hemorrhagic septicemia virus. The Northern sand lance ranks among the most important forage fishes in the coastal waters of the northeast Atlantic. But data produced from four experimental years have revealed that embryos of this species show a worryingly high sensitivity to ocean acidification. In a recent study, we identified a potential novel mechanism of CO2-induced mortality in fish embryos, and combined our experimental data with seasonal pCO2 predictions extracted from a downscaled ensemble simulation for the Golf of Maine to forecast the hatching success of sand lance under near-future acidification.

In person: Redfield Auditorium
Zoom: https://whoi-edu.zoom.us/j/99918389171 Meeting ID: 999 1838 9171
By dial: Find your local number: https://whoi-edu.zoom.us/u/amxOqqWsg
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