Effect of environmental history on the physiology and acute stress response of the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica)

Oysters are a critical part of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, so it is important to understand how they might respond to increasingly variable and potentially stressful environmental conditions. This study aimed to investigate the links between environmental history and oyster physiology in order to understand how oysters might perform in future conditions. The objectives of this study were to (1) examine how environmental history might influence oyster physiology, (2) evaluate how environmental history might influence physiological stress responses, (3) assess the relative importance of distal and proximal environmental history on oyster physiology, and (4) determine the relative importance of distal and proximal environmental history on physiological stress responses. Oysters were deployed at four different sites from July to November 2018. After that period, half of the oysters at each site were collected for analysis, and the other half were redeployed in common garden conditions for one month prior to collection and analysis. After each collection, some oysters from each group were analyzed for glycogen and condition index analysis, while other oysters were subjected to an acute salinity exposure. After the exposure, total antioxidant potential was measured. Water quality was measured throughout field deployments and experimental treatments. Oysters from different sites had different physiological conditions, demonstrating that environmental history influenced physiology. However, oysters from different sites responded similarly to different acute salinity exposures, suggesting that environmental history may not influence stress physiology or that the experimental exposures did not induce stress. After common garden conditions, the physiological states of the oysters changed in different ways from their initial states. However, some physiological traits experienced similar changes from their initial states after common garden condition, indicating that portions of environmental history can affect physiological components in a variety of ways. The site of an oyster’s initial deployment affected how stress responses changed from their initial states in response to common garden conditions; the significance of site indicates that distal history may play a significant role in shaping physiological stress responses. The acute salinity exposure did not have an effect on the change in stress responses from their initial states in response to common garden conditions, suggesting that the experimental treatments may have been insufficient in inducing a stress response. By utilizing knowledge about environmental history and its influence on an oyster’s physiological state, better predictions can be made concerning how oyster health and performance might be shaped by future environmental conditions under climate change

Effect of environmental history on the physiology and acute stress response of the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica

Environmental history (regimes of water quality to which an organism has been exposed in the past) may influence how the physiology of eastern oysters Crassostrea virginica responds to future environmental conditions caused by climate change. Previous research has examined environmental history in a 1-dimensional framework, failing to capture environmental history complexity through space and time. In this study, we examined environmental history as a multi-faceted parameter, incorporating abiotic water quality components, such as temperature, pH, and salinity, that differ among locations. We also assessed how different lengths of environmental histories, defined as proximal and distal, affected oyster physiology and stress response. Finally, we compared the relative influence of abiotic components of environmental history on oyster physiology. We found that physiology and stress response are differentially affected by proximal and distal environmental history, demonstrating the importance of examining environmental history as a multi-faceted and dynamic parameter. Specifically, distal environmental history primarily influenced condition index and total antioxidant potential, while proximal environmental history primarily influenced glycogen content. Salinity of distal environmental history significantly shaped condition index, establishing salinity as a principal factor when considering acclimatization to variable environments. No water quality components were significant in - fluences on glycogen and total antioxidant potential, providing opportunities for research on other components of environmental history. Identifying the temporal portion of oysters’ environmental history that influences physiology supports future efforts to predict population tolerance to climate change. Additionally, examining multiple abiotic and biotic components of environmental history can elucidate means of acclimatization to future environmental change

MEDFORD: A HUMAN AND MACHINE READABLE METADATA MARKUP LANGUAGE

Reproducibility of research is essential for science. However, in the way modern computational biology research is done, it is easy to lose track of small, but extremely critical, details. Key details, such as the specific version of a software used or iteration of a genome can easily be lost in the shuffle, or perhaps not noted at all. Much work is being done on the database and storage side of things, ensuring that there exists a space to store experiment-specific details, but current mechanisms for recording details are cumbersome for scientists to use. We propose a new metadata description language, named MEDFORD, in which scientists can record all details relevant to their research. Human-readable, easily-editable, and templatable, MEDFORD serves as a collection point for all notes that a researcher could find relevant to their research, be it for internal use or for future replication. MEDFORD has been applied to coral research, documenting research from RNA-seq analyses to photo collections