Effects of Environmental Stressors on the Early Development of Intertidal and Subtidal Gastropod Embryos

Salinity, temperature and ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation are common environmental stressors in coastal habitats. These stressors are likely to increase in intensity due to the effects of climate change and can have important impacts on population and community dynamics for early development in gastropods that deposit egg masses on rocky shores. The aim of this study was to identify the effects of single and multiple stressors on the development of intertidal and shallow subtidal gastropods with encapsulated embryos. In manipulative experiments I exposed egg masses of the gastropod species Siphonaria australis, Ercolania felina, Pleurobranchaea maculata, Aplysia juliana and Doris wellingtonensis to realistic levels of either salinity, temperature or UV-B radiation, or to a combination of stressors, for different lengths of time. Embryos were then subjected to the most stressful levels of each stressor at either early or late stages of development and at different days of embryonic development. Further, egg masses were exposed to sublethal salinity, temperature and UV-B radiation stress simultaneously, simulating tide pool conditions on a warm sunny summer day. Larvae hatching from stressed and unstressed egg masses were subsequently periodically subjected to increased temperature and UV-B radiation and examined over 10 days to detect possible carry-over effects of exposure to stress in the egg mass. The results revealed that for individual stressors, low salinity (20‰), high temperature (25°C) and high UV-B (1.7 W m ⁻ ² s ⁻ ¹, i.e. a level similar to a sunny NZ summer day) all caused the highest embryonic mortality. The response to stressors was species-specific but overall the intertidal species had lower embryonic mortality than the subtidal species. Generally, chronic exposure had higher impacts on the development of embryos than periodic exposure and early embryonic development stages were most vulnerable to stress. UV-B radiation had particularly damaging effects on embryonic and larval stages for the intertidal pulmonate limpet Siphonaria australis. Further, multiple stressors had synergistic effects and caused high embryonic mortality in the egg mass as well as impacting on the vulnerability of larvae to stressors. This study revealed that stress experienced during embryonic stages can result in sub-lethal damage that increases vulnerability to temperature and decreases vulnerability to UV-B radiation experienced in the larval stage. In total, my results suggest that (1) the effects of different environmental stressors on early development of intertidal and subtidal gastropods are complex and depend on the intensity, duration and time of stress, and are generally species-specific; (2) multiple stressors can act synergistically to affect early development and (3) sublethal exposure to stress in the egg mass can have negative carry-over effects on later larval stages.