Ocean acidification is expected to affect marine organisms in the near future. Furthermore, abrupt short-term fluctuations in seawater pCO2 characteristic of near-short coastal regions and high-density aquaculture sites currently have the potential to influence organismal and community functioning by altering animal behaviour. While anti-predator responses in fishes exposed to elevated pCO2 are well documented, such responses in benthic marine invertebrates are poorly studied. We used high frequency, non-invasive biosensors to test whether or not short term (3-week) exposure to elevated pCO2 could impact behavioural responses to the threat of predation in adult Mediterranean mussels from Galicia on the northwestern coast of Spain. Predator alarm cues (crushed conspecifics) resulted in a prolonged (1 h) reduction in the degree of valve opening (−20%) but had no clear effect on overall valve movement activity, while elevated pCO2 did not affect either response. Our results add to the increasing body of evidence suggesting that the effects of end-of-century pCO2 levels on marine animal behaviour are likely weak. Nonetheless, longer-term exposures spanning multiple generations are needed to better understand how ocean acidification might impact behavioural responses to predation in marine bivalves.

In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2022) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation by seacarb is 2023-07-14.