Impact of Ocean Acidification on Marine Invertebrate Development

Ocean acidification, driven by the uptake of anthropogenic CO₂, is altering seawater chemistry with far-reaching consequences for the early life stages of marine invertebrates. Declining pH reduces carbonate ion availability, impairing calcification and skeletal formation in species such as sea urchins, sea cucumbers and bivalves. Larval growth is frequently stunted, with developmental delays at critical transitions (for example from gastrula to pluteus), while non-calcifying processes including metabolism, acid–base regulation and immune function can also be compromised. Acidification often interacts with secondary stressors—most notably warming—to produce synergistic or antagonistic effects on growth, survival and physiology. Emerging evidence highlights plastic responses at molecular, cellular and biomechanical levels, which may confer resilience or reveal bottlenecks in development. Transgenerational plasticity, whereby parental exposure shapes offspring performance, offers a potential buffer against rapid environmental change. Understanding species-specific thresholds for physiological disruption, and the capacity for adaptation or acclimation, is essential to predict shifts in population dynamics, ecosystem services and global biodiversity. Integrating physiological, transcriptomic and ecological data will inform management strategies, from aquaculture breeding programmes to conservation planning, as the marine environment continues to change.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have shown that larval green sea urchins exposed to reduced pH maintain swimming speed and stability despite significant reductions in growth rate. Detailed motion analysis under still and shear flow conditions revealed compensatory alterations in larval shape, suggesting biomechanical plasticity that preserves dispersal potential even as shell formation slows. Further work has explored transgenerational plasticity in a temperate sea urchin, demonstrating that adults pre-conditioned to low pH preload gametes with antioxidant transcripts. Offspring from these adults exhibit enhanced early resilience to acidified conditions, although their capacity to mount a classic heat shock response remains limited until later developmental stages. Such parental effects underscore the importance of life-history context in assessing vulnerability to ocean change.

Impact of Ocean Acidification on Marine Invertebrate Development publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in impact of ocean acidification on marine invertebrate development across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Ocean acidification: The process by which seawater pH decreases due to uptake of atmospheric CO₂, reducing carbonate ion availability.

Calcification: The biological formation of calcium carbonate structures, essential to shell and skeleton development in many invertebrates.

Transgenerational plasticity: Phenotypic adjustments in offspring performance resulting from parental exposure to environmental conditions.

Biomineralisation: The cellular and molecular processes by which organisms precipitate minerals to form hard structures.

pCO₂: Partial pressure of carbon dioxide in seawater, a measure of dissolved CO₂ concentration affecting pH.

References

1. Acidification reduced growth rate but not swimming speed of larval sea urchins. Scientific Reports (2015).
2. Molecular mechanisms underpinning transgenerational plasticity in the green sea urchin Psammechinus miliaris. Scientific Reports (2019).
3. Transcriptomic Responses of a Lightly Calcified Echinoderm to Experimental Seawater Acidification and Warming during Early Development. Biology (2023).
4. A SLC4 family bicarbonate transporter is critical for intracellular pH regulation and biomineralization in sea urchin embryos. eLife (2018).
5. Synthesis of Thresholds of Ocean Acidification Impacts on Echinoderms. Frontiers in Marine Science (2021).