Turning up the heat! Settlement of benthic

The Arctic is a hot spot for climate change so understanding settlement and colonisation under future climate warming scenarios is crucial for marine ecosystem management of the high North. The project activity will deploy for the first time heated settlement panels in the Arctic, allowing field manipulation of thermal habitat (up to 3 degrees above ambient temperature) to simulate environmental conditions under different climate scenarios.
To monitor the colonisation and settlement of organisms on the heated panels 25 images of each panel are taken and stitched together forming one high resolution image which will also allow for use and experimentation with machine learning and AI.
The project plans to better understand ecological settlement and colonisation of benthic invertebrates under future climate scenarios, and to extract organism DNA to investigate expression of heat shock proteins as a mechanism of adaptation.
Following its demonstrated applicability; we envision deploying heated settlement panels near fish farms to explore the effect of multiple stressors (i.e. climate change and organic enrichment) on benthic settlement and community development
Manipulative experimental field work at high latitudes is rarely done but essential if we are to move from observing patterns to gaining a mechanistic understanding of underlying processes