Warming, More Acidic Oceans Threaten Pteropods - Basis Of Marine Food Chain - The Australian

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GLOBAL warming is threatening the future of a tiny marine snail which, if lost, could trigger a catastrophic collapse of Antarctica's food chain, experts say.

Pteropods have been dubbed the “potato chip” of the oceans because they provide food for so many different species. But the lentil-sized snails - eaten by fish and other lower life forms, which are in turn eaten by species higher up the food chain - are highly sensitive to temperature and acidity, both of which are affected by climate change. Carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere is expected to make the oceans more acidic. This could have dire consequences for pteropods, impairing their ability to make shells.

Gretchen Hoffmann, from the University of California at Santa Barbara, who has made a special study of pteropods, said: “These animals are not charismatic but they are talking to us just as much as penguins or polar bears. “They are harbingers of change. It's possible by 2050 they may not be able to make a shell any more. If we lose these organisms, the impact on the food chain will be catastrophic.”

Dr Hoffmann said pteropods were an “incredibly important” fish food in parts of the Southern Ocean lacking shrimp-like krill, another vital food source. “Almost everything eats fish there - penguins, seals, even some of the whales,” she told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23233857-11949,00.html