Marine Biology Commons^™

Modeling Climate-Dependent Larval Growth Rate And Duration Of Olympia Oysters In The Salish Sea, Jake A. Lawlor

WWU Graduate School Collection

Most invertebrates in the ocean begin their lives with a planktonic larval phase that is of utmost importance for dispersal and distribution of these species, especially for organisms that are sessile or otherwise mobility-limited during adult life. As larvae are particularly vulnerable to environmental change, holistic understanding of interacting climate stressors on larval life is important to predict population persistence and vulnerability of species. However, traditional experimental designs are often limited by resolution in understanding multiple stress relationships, as environmental variables in the ocean do not occur in discrete interacting levels. Here, I use a novel experimental approach to model …