Dear Colleagues,

In the tropics, oceans are rapidly warming (OW) and marine heat waves (MHW), as well as hypoxia, are becoming more frequent, more severe, and longer-lasting. The impact these phenomena have on marine life depends on i) the multilevel hierarchical nature of physiological responses, ii) the complexity of genotype–phenotype–environment interactions, iii) organisms’ ability to buffer changes through behavior, iv) the plastic, epigenetic, and evolutionary trajectories of species and their ability to rapidly adapt to changes, and v) indirect impacts mediated by changes in species interactions and community structures and dynamics. In this Special Issue, we aim to investigate these processes in depth and create a useful critical synthesis, by bringing together cutting-edge original studies that assess the emerging risks of chronic and extreme warming and hypoxic events for tropical biotic systems. Innovative approaches in theoretical biology, field observations, experiments, and modeling, coupled to the investigation of pathways defining responses from cells to communities, are expected to enable significant improvements in our ability to predict the susceptibility of differing marine taxa phenotypes to global changes.

The target is tropical marine biotic systems, and the scope and potential topics include (but are not limited to):

- Field gradient studies and in situ transplant experiments testing the implications of local adaptation on organisms’ sensitivity to OW, MHW, and hypoxia;

- Laboratory selection experiments testing organisms’ scope for plastic and adaptive responses to OW, MHW, and hypoxia;

- Mesocosms experiments testing OW, MHW, and hypoxia effects on community composition and structure in tropical reefs, mangroves, seagrass meadows, and other tropical coastal habitats;

- Characterization of the molecular networks and metabolic pathways of tropical organisms under thermal and hypoxic stress via using -omics approaches;

- Comparative approaches to define the thermal and hypoxia vulnerability (physiological, developmental, life history, ecological, behavioral) of tropical life stages, populations, and species; 

- How the relationship between sub-lethal stress (e.g., determined by biochemical markers) and organisms’ performance varies under thermally and oxygen-stressful scenarios for different taxa;

- Evolution of genetic, phenotypic, and ecological traits of organisms under thermal and oxygen changes;

- Paleoenvironmental approaches to OW, MHW, and hypoxia as drivers of marine mass extinctions (through integrating the fossil record with current species observational and experimental data);

- Theoretical and conceptual approaches to OW, MHW, and hypoxia impacts in marine ecosystems’ functional and structural connectivity;

- Uni- or multifactor modeling approaches projecting climate-driven changes (OW, MHW, and hypoxia) in species’ range shifts and how the use of different models affects the assessment of species thermal and hypoxia vulnerability.

Dr. Carolina Madeira
Dr. Noelle Lucey
Dr. Piero Calosi
Guest Editors

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• comparative and evolutionary physiology
• ecology and evolution
• conservation physiology and biology
• developmental biology
• thermal biology
• behavioral ecology
• community ecology
• theoretical biology
• biogeographical and evolutionary modeling
• global changes