AUTHOR=Wolf Fabian , Seebass Katja , Pansch Christian TITLE=The Role of Recovery Phases in Mitigating the Negative Impacts of Marine Heatwaves on the Sea Star Asterias rubens JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science VOLUME=8 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.790241 DOI=10.3389/fmars.2021.790241 ISSN=2296-7745 ABSTRACT=
During recent years, experimental ecology started to focus on regional to local environmental fluctuations in the context of global climate change. Among these, marine heatwaves can pose significant threats to marine organisms. Yet, experimental studies that include fluctuating thermal stress are rare, and if available often fail to base experimental treatments on available long-term environmental data. We evaluated 22-year high-resolution sea surface temperature data on the occurrence of heatwaves and cold-spells in a temperate coastal marine environment. The absence of a general warming trend in the data may in parts be responsible for a lack of changes in heatwave occurrences (frequency) and their traits (intensity, duration, and rate of change) over time. Yet, the retrieved traits for present-day heatwaves ensured most-natural treatment scenarios, enabling an experimental examination of the impacts of marine heatwaves and phases of recovery on an important temperate predator, the common sea star