Impact of temperature and ph on coastal plankton community of bay of bengal with Implications to climate change

Abstract

Climate change is a natural process that the world has gone newlinethrough in the past. In this way, the maritime environment is especially newlinevulnerable to the harmful effects of a changing climate, unlike any other newlineecosystem. This is because the interconnected food chain among newlineprimary producers, intermediate consumers, and predators presents newlineextraordinarily complex energy supply issues. However, ocean warming, newlineand acidification are known to be the two crucial parameters of climate newlinechange that can coexist and cause a synergistic effect on marine flora newlineand fauna. The marine plankton population in Bay of Bengal is newlineincredibly complex and heavily influenced by the seasons. This thesis newlinesummarizes the investigation which started with a field survey to newlineunderstand the physico-chemical parameters and its relationship with newlineplankton distribution and diversity at the Covelong coast. Later, some of newlinethe important parameters such as temperature and pH were selected to newlineconduct the mesocosm study to understand the isolated and combined newlineeffects of aforementioned parameters on the plankton assemblages. newlineSubsequently, a species of copepod was also successfully cultured in the newlinelaboratory to investigate the impacts of temperature and pH on its newlinepopulation, feeding, and reproduction. To describe in detail, the field newlinesurvey shows that the coast of Covelong, Bay of Bengal consists of 5 newlinegroups of phytoplankton and 16 groups of zooplankton. Where newlineMonsoon season had a great influence on environmental factors and the newlineplankton community. Subsequently, the diatom dominated natural newlineassemblages of phytoplankton community was studied under different newline6 newlinetemperature treatments (28 ± 0.5oC, newline30 ± 0.5oC, 31 ± 0.5oC, 32 ± 0.5oC) along with two-time nutrient replete newlinecondition in the laboratory to predict the changes in community newlinecomposition, primary production, respiration, and reactive oxygen newlinespecies for the year 2100. The investigation showed that the temperature newlineprompts the percentage of shifts between Coscinodiscophyceae and newlineBacillariophyceae.