What Drives Jellyfish Population Cycles? Influence of Climate and Environment on the Complex Life Histories of Scyphozoans

Abstract

Jellyfish population cycles and bloom events occur at global, regional, and local scales. Understanding what causes these cycles now and in the future is a major question in jellyfish bloom research, because of the potential impacts on ecosystem function and services. Most bloom forming scyphozoan jellyfish have complex life histories involving a long-lived asexually reproducing benthic polyp and a sexually reproducing pelagic medusae. Environmental and climate factors affect each life stage, but we do not fully understand how these variables drive life stage transition, or how demographic differences in survival, growth and fecundity translate into visible jellyfish outbreaks. We undertook a comprehensive laboratory and field-based study of the physicochemical conditions that control survival, fecundity and phase transition of the different life stages of scyphozoan jellyfish. Through this research, we examine the effects of environmental drivers on jellyfish population cycles and life stage transition. Modifications to estuaries through the construction of barrages alter the natural dynamics of inhabitant species by controlling freshwater inputs into those systems, driving the presence and absence of medusae from estuaries. As well as this, we explore how environmental conditions translate into reproductive success or failure in temperate populations from the medusa to the polyp life stage, demonstrating that early polyp growth rates are strongly linked to their thermal environment and highlighting a potential marine heatwave event. We examine not only the effects of temperature and other climate drivers on scyphozoan jellyfish growth, survival and reproduction, but also whether epigenetic transgenerational effects can drive acclimation to warmer summer temperatures in the short term in the context of a warming ocean. No parental effects were observed in the first or second generation, and in the third generation the transgenerational effects of temperature were subtle and appeared most strongly in cooling scenarios. Finally, within the setting of anthropogenically-driven climate change, we demonstrate for the first time that A. aurita polyps require a minimum period of cooler temperatures to strobilate, contradicting claims that jellyfish populations will be more prevalent in warming oceans, specifically in the context of warmer winter conditions. To answer these questions, we chose the common, or moon jellyfish Aurelia aurita as our primary experimental organism. However, we expanded our research to other species to demonstrate how they may vary in both environment and response to forcing factors as compared to a ‘typical’ model species. This thesis highlights the importance of examining each population within the context of their environment, and advances our understanding of how the climate and environment affect jellyfish life stage transition.

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ORCID for Catherine Lucas: orcid.org/0000-0002-5929-7481

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