Partitioning resilience of a marine foundation species into resistance and recovery trajectories.

The resilience of an ecological unit encompasses resistance during adverse conditions and the capacity to recover. We adopted a 'resistance-recovery' framework to experimentally partition the resilience of a foundation species (the seagrass Cymodocea nodosa). The shoot abundances of nine seagrass meadows were followed before, during and after simulated light reduction conditions. We determined the significance of ecological, environmental and genetic drivers on seagrass resistance (% of shoots retained during the light deprivation treatments) and recovery (duration from the end of the perturbed state back to initial conditions). To identify whether seagrass recovery was linearly related to prior resistance, we then established the connection between trajectories of resistance and recovery. Finally, we assessed whether recovery patterns were affected by biological drivers (production of sexual products-seeds-and asexual propagation) at the meadow-scale. Resistance to shading significantly increased with the genetic diversity of the meadow and seagrass recovery was conditioned by initial resistance during shading. A threshold in resistance (here, at a ca. 70% of shoot abundances retained during the light deprivation treatments) denoted a critical point that considerably delays seagrass recovery if overpassed. Seed densities, but not rhizome elongation rates, were higher in meadows that exhibited large resistance and quick recovery, which correlated positively with meadow genetic diversity. Our results highlight the critical role of resistance to a disturbance for persistence of a marine foundation species. Estimation of critical trade-offs between seagrass resistance and recovery is a promising field of research to better manage impacts on seagrass meadows.

Herbivory and resource availability shift plant defense and herbivore feeding choice in a seagrass system.

Numerous hypotheses have been posited to explain the observed variation in plant defense strategies against herbivory. Under resource-rich environments, plants are predicted to increase their tolerance (limiting resource model; LRM) and, while the resource availability hypothesis (RAH) predicts a decrease in constitutive resistance in plant species growing in resource-rich environments, at the intraspecific level, plants are predicted to follow an opposite pattern (intraspecific RAH). Furthermore, the effect of multiple factors in modulating plant defense strategies has been scarcely explored and is more difficult to predict. Our aim was to understand how plant defense traits respond to herbivory, resource availability and their interactions, and to assess the effects on plant palatability. To this end, we performed an in situ factorial experiment at two sites simulating three herbivory levels and two nutrient availability conditions with the seagrass Posidonia oceanica. Additionally, we performed a series of feeding experiments with its two main herbivores. While plants decreased their constitutive resistance under nutrient fertilization (contrary to intraspecific RAH but in accordance to the RAH), and did not increase allocation to tolerance (likely due to resource limitation, LRM), simulated herbivory induced resistance traits. However, we found no interactive effects of nutrient fertilization and herbivory simulation on plant defense. Both herbivores responded similarly to changes in plant palatability, strongly preferring nutrient-enriched plants and non-clipped plants. This work highlights the need to better understand the drivers of plant defense intraspecific variability in response to resources, particularly in habitat-forming species where changes in plant traits and abundance will cascade onto associated species.

Future warmer seas: increased stress and susceptibility to grazing in seedlings of a marine habitat-forming species.

Increases in seawater temperature are expected to have negative consequences for marine organisms. Beyond individual effects, species-specific differences in thermal tolerance are predicted to modify species interactions and increase the strength of top-down effects, particularly in plant-herbivore interactions. Shifts in trophic interactions will be especially important when affecting habitat-forming species such as seagrasses, as the consequences on their abundance will cascade throughout the food web. Seagrasses are a major component of coastal ecosystems offering important ecosystem services, but are threatened by multiple anthropogenic stressors, including warming. The mechanistic understanding of seagrass responses to warming at multiple scales of organization remains largely unexplored, especially in early-life stages such as seedlings. Yet, these early-life stages are critical for seagrass expansion processes and adaptation to climate change. In this study, we determined the effects of a 3 month experimental exposure to present and predicted mean summer SST of the Mediterranean Sea (25°C, 27°C, and 29°C) on the photophysiology, size, and ecology (i.e., plant-herbivore interactions) of seedlings of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica. Warming resulted in increased mortality, leaf necrosis, and respiration as well as lower carbohydrate reserves in the seed, the main storage organ in seedlings. Aboveground biomass and root growth were also limited with warming, which could hamper seedling establishment success. Furthermore, warming increased the susceptibility to consumption by grazers, likely due to lower leaf fiber content and thickness. Our results indicate that warming will negatively affect seagrass seedlings through multiple direct and indirect pathways: increased stress, reduced establishment potential, lower storage of carbohydrate reserves, and increased susceptibly to consumption. This work provides a significant step forward in understanding the major mechanisms that will drive the capacity of seagrass seedlings to adapt and survive to warming, highlighting the potential additive effects that herbivory will have on ultimately determining seedling success.