Coastal marine invertebrates in a climate change world

Coastal marine invertebrates in a climate change world - vulnerability and resilience to climate stress.

Abstract
With their location at lands-edge, coastal marine invertebrates withstand marked water and air temperatures and abrupt salinity changes through tidal cycles. In a climate change world, these stressors are being magnified by the increased intensity and emergence of extreme climatic events including marine and atmospheric heatwaves, cyclones, coastal wildfires, flood-driven hyposalinity and changes in ice cover.

Diverse habitat dependent marine invertebrate communities on rocky shores, mudflats, mangroves and saltmarsh are at the forefront of these perturbations which can co-occur and interact with other anthropogenic stressors. The vulnerabilities of intertidal marine invertebrates to increasing stress from heatwaves, fire and hyposalinity is presented with a focus on molluscs and echinoderms. Temperature and salinity extremes are particularly damaging if they coincide with low tide cycles.

As adaptation to environmental variability is an inherent feature of the evolution of intertidal communities, it will be important to understand tolerance levels with respect to extreme stressors, as this varies between species and across the tidal cycle. It will also be important to understand the capacity to build climate resilience through acclimatisation, adaptation, plasticity and the presence of refuge habitats as well as identify the potential for species’ redundancy with respect to provision of key ecosystem services.

About the speaker

Professor Maria Byrne FAA. Professor of Marine Biology, The University of Sydney.

Professor Maria Byrne is an internationally recognized leader in marine ecology, global change biology, and evolutionary development. Based at the University of Sydney, her pioneering research investigates how climate change stressors—specifically ocean warming, acidification, and marine heatwaves—impact marine invertebrates from the tropics to the poles. For over two decades, her laboratory has quantified how these compounding stressors alter fundamental biological processes like calcification, physiology, and larval development.

A world authority on echinoderm biology, Professor Byrne uses organisms like sea urchins and the crown-of-thorns starfish as vital indicators of ocean health and ecosystem resilience. Her work maps species’ vulnerabilities across life-history stages to provide critical data for marine conservation and fisheries management.Her distinguished career includes 12 years as Director of the One Tree Island Research Station on the Great Barrier Reef and key contributions to the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce.

In recognition of her transformative impact on marine biodiversity research, she was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) in 2019 and awarded an honorary Doctor of Science by the University of Galway in 2023.

Brought to you by Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland's School of Biological Sciences and the Patricia & Peter Bergquist Visiting Fellowship.

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