Transgenerational Responses to Climate Change in Marine Organisms

Marine species face unprecedented environmental change through warming, acidification and deoxygenation of the oceans. Beyond genetic adaptation and within‐generation plasticity, transgenerational responses—where parental or even grandparental environments influence offspring phenotype—have emerged as a critical component of resilience. Such responses may be mediated by maternal provisioning, paternal effects, epigenetic reprogramming or changes in microbial symbionts. Experimental work across diverse taxa, from corals and polychaetes to reef fishes and tubeworms, has revealed that offspring whose parents experience moderate stress often exhibit enhanced growth, survival, metabolic efficiency or reproductive output under similar conditions. Conversely, mismatches between parental and offspring environments or exposure during sensitive reproductive windows can elicit stress responses that reduce performance. The capacity for positive carry‐over effects depends on the rate and timing of environmental change, the life stage at which it is experienced and trade‐offs with other fitness components. Recognising the limits of plasticity and potential costs of prolonged or mismatched exposures is essential for predicting population persistence and for guiding conservation measures such as assisted evolution or selective acclimation strategies.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent work in polychaete worms has demonstrated that multigenerational exposure to combined ocean warming and acidification can conserve adaptive reaction norms in key life-history traits despite strong selective pressures. An investigation of coral brooding species showed that conditioning adults to low pH environments enhances larval settlement, survivorship and early growth relative to offspring from unstressed parents, suggesting developmental priming during brooding confers lasting benefits. Studies of gender-specific responses in calcifying tubeworms indicate that maternal and paternal experiences of acidification exert opposite effects on offspring performance, underscoring the need to consider sex-linked energy allocation when predicting species tolerance to long-term pH change.

Transgenerational Responses to Climate Change in Marine Organisms publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in transgenerational responses to climate change in marine organisms across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Transgenerational plasticity: Heritable changes in offspring phenotype resulting from parental environmental exposures rather than direct genetic mutation.

Phenotypic plasticity: The capacity of a single genotype to express different phenotypes under varying environmental conditions.

Epigenetics: Molecular processes, such as DNA methylation or histone modification, that regulate gene expression without altering the DNA sequence.

Reaction norm: The pattern of phenotypic expression of a genotype across a range of environmental conditions.

References

1. Multi‐generational responses of a marine polychaete to a rapid change in seawater pCO2. Evolutionary Applications (2015).
2. Environmentally-induced parental or developmental conditioning influences coral offspring ecological performance. Scientific Reports (2020).
3. Trans-generational responses to low pH depend on parental gender in a calcifying tubeworm. Scientific Reports (2015).
4. Timing-specific parental effects of ocean warming in a coral reef fish. Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2024).
5. Transgenerational effects persist down the maternal line in marine sticklebacks: gene expression matches physiology in a warming ocean. Evolutionary Applications (2016).
6. Transgenerational plasticity of reproduction depends on rate of warming across generations. Evolutionary Applications (2016).
7. Can trans‐generational experiments be used to enhance species resilience to ocean warming and acidification?. Evolutionary Applications (2016).