Paper on biodiversity responses to multiple environmental variables published

Sharp increases in atmospheric CO2 are resulting in ocean warming, acidification and deoxygenation that threaten marine organisms on continental margins and their ecological functions and resulting ecosystem services. The relative influence of these stressors on biodiversity remains unclear, as well as the threshold levels for change and when secondary stressors become important. This new paper published by Dr. Sperling and collaborators Dr. Christina Frieder (USC) and Dr. Lisa Levin (SIO) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B investigates these questions using ecological data collected across natural environmental gradients on upwelling margins. Oxygen was found to be the environmental parameter that best explained variance in diversity, but only at relatively low levels.