Epigenetic plasticity enables copepods to cope with ocean acidification

Young Hwan Lee (), Min-Sub Kim, Minghua Wang, Ramji K. Bhandari, Heum Gi Park, Rudolf Shiu-Sun Wu and Jae-Seong Lee ()
Additional contact information
Young Hwan Lee: Sungkyunkwan University
Min-Sub Kim: Sungkyunkwan University
Minghua Wang: Xiamen University
Ramji K. Bhandari: University of North Carolina Greensboro
Heum Gi Park: Gangneung-Wonju National University
Rudolf Shiu-Sun Wu: The Education University of Hong Kong
Jae-Seong Lee: Sungkyunkwan University

Nature Climate Change, 2022, vol. 12, issue 10, 918-927

Abstract: Abstract Plasticity enhances species fitness and survival under climate change. Ocean acidification poses a potential threat to copepods, a major zooplankton group that serves as a key link between the lower and higher trophic levels in the marine environment, yet the mechanisms underlying different adaptive responses remain poorly understood. Here we show that although elevated CO2 can exert negative effects on reproduction of Paracyclopina nana, multigenerational plasticity can enable recovery after three generations. By integrating the methylome and transcriptome with the draft genome and undertaking DNA methylation treatments, we demonstrate the vital role of epigenetic modifications in ocean acidification responses and identify regions associated with reproductive resilience. Our results demonstrate that DNA methylation might play an important role in enhancing species fitness of copepods and that failing to consider phenotypic plasticity could lead to overestimation of species’ vulnerabilities.

Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01477-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:12:y:2022:i:10:d:10.1038_s41558-022-01477-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01477-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().