Steve Widdicombe

Steve Widdicombe
Plymouth Marine Laboratory | PML

PhD Univeristy of Plymouth

About

240
Publications
118,443
Reads
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13,220
Citations
Additional affiliations
November 1991 - May 2015
Plymouth Marine Laboratory
Position
  • Head of Science

Publications

Publications (240)
Article
Full-text available
Global stressors, such as ocean acidification, constitute a rapidly emerging and significant problem for marine organisms, ecosystem functioning and services. The coastal ecosystems of the Humboldt Current System (HCS) off Chile harbour a broad physical–chemical latitudinal and temporal gradient with considerable patchiness in local oceanographic c...
Article
Full-text available
Ocean acidification (OA) poses a major threat to marine ecosystems globally, having significant ecological and economic importance. The number and complexity of experiments examining the effects of OA has substantially increased over the past decade, in an attempt to address multi-stressor interactions and long-term responses in an increasing range...
Article
Full-text available
Physiological responses to temperature are known to be a major determinant of species distributions and can dictate the sensitivity of populations to global warming. In contrast, little is known about how other major global change drivers, such as ocean acidification (OA), will shape species distributions in the future. Here, by integrating populat...
Article
The effects of ocean acidification (OA) on the structure and complexity of coastal marine biogenic habitat have been broadly overlooked. Here we explore how declining pH and carbonate saturation may aaect the structural complexity of four major biogenic habitats. Our analyses predict that indirect eeects driven by OA on habitat-forming organisms co...
Article
For the past 200 years, the oceans have been absorbing carbon dioxide at an unprecidented rate. It is now evident that this ongoing process has already significantly altered seawater carbon chemistry at a global scale and will continue to do so for hundreds of years to come; a phenomenon termed “ocean acidification”. The challenge currently facing...
Article
Full-text available
The Western Channel Observatory (WCO) comprises a series of pelagic, benthic and atmospheric sampling sites within 40 km of Plymouth, UK, that have been sampled by the Plymouth institutes on a regular basis since 1903. This longevity of recording and the high frequency of observations provide a unique combination of data; for example temperature da...
Article
Full-text available
The Western Channel Observatory (WCO) comprises a series of pelagic, benthic and atmospheric sampling sites within 40 km of Plymouth, UK, that have been sampled by the Plymouth institutes on a regular basis since 1903. This longevity of recording and the high frequency of observations provide a unique combination of data; for example temperature da...
Article
The Western Channel Observatory (WCO) comprises a series of pelagic, benthic and atmospheric sampling sites within 40 km of Plymouth, UK, that have been sampled by the Plymouth institutes on a regular basis since 1903. This longevity of recording and the high frequency of observations provide a unique combination of data; for example temperature da...
Preprint
Full-text available
The Western Channel Observatory (WCO) comprises a series of pelagic, benthic and atmospheric sampling sites within 40 km of Plymouth UK, which have been sampled by the Plymouth Institutes on a regular basis since 1903. This longevity of recording and the high frequency of observations provide a unique combination of data; for example temperature da...
Article
Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a pervasive but still under-recognized driver of global change. In coastal settings, a large majority of the studies assessing ALAN impacts has focused on individual species, even though it is unclear whether results gathered from single species can be used to predict community-wide responses. Similarly, these st...
Preprint
Full-text available
Approximately one quarter of the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere annually from human activities is absorbed by the ocean, resulting in a reduction of seawater pH and shifts in seawater carbonate chemistry. This multi-decadal process, termed “anthropogenic ocean acidification” (OA) has been shown to have detrimental impacts on marine ecosystems. Recen...
Article
Full-text available
The global threat that ocean acidification poses to marine ecosystems has been recognized by the UN 2030 Agenda under Sustainable Development Goal, Target 14.3: to reduce ocean acidification. The Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) is a collaborative international network to detect and understand the drivers of ocean acidification...
Article
Full-text available
Carbon capture and storage is a key mitigation strategy proposed for keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5 °C. Offshore storage can provide up to 13% of the global CO2 reduction required to achieve the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change goals. The public must be assured that potential leakages from storage reservoirs can be detected...
Article
Full-text available
Unprecedented and dramatic transformations are occurring in the Arctic in response to climate change, but academic, public, and political discourse has disproportionately focussed on the most visible and direct aspects of change, including sea ice melt, permafrost thaw, the fate of charismatic megafauna, and the expansion of fisheries. Such narrati...
Article
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Marine spatial planning that addresses ocean climate-driven change (‘climate-smart MSP’) is a global aspiration to support economic growth, food security and ecosystem sustainability. Ocean climate change (‘CC’) modelling may become a key decision-support tool for MSP, but traditional modelling analysis and communication challenges prevent their br...
Article
Full-text available
Particle mixing and irrigation of the seabed by benthic fauna (bioturbation) have major impacts on ecosystem functions such as remineralization of organic matter and sediment-water exchange. As a tribute to Prof. Gaston Desrosiers by the Nereis Park association, eighteen laboratories carried out a collaborative experiment to acquire a global snapsh...
Article
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The increasing illumination of our world by artificial light at night (ALAN) has created a new field of global change research with impacts now being demonstrated across taxa, biological ranks and spatial scales. Following advances in terrestrial ecology, marine ALAN has become a rapidly growing research area attracting scientists from across all b...
Article
In marine environments, the exchange of particles and solutes between the seafloor and overlying water column, known as benthic-pelagic (B/P) coupling is an important component in many biological and biogeochemical cycles. Key processes and drivers involved in this exchange display strongly seasonal variability, especially in temperate coastal envi...
Article
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Can experimental studies on the behavioural impacts of ocean acidification be trusted? That question was raised in early 2020 when a high-profile paper failed to corroborate previously observed responses of coral reef fish to high CO2. New information on the methodologies used in the “replicated” studies now provides a plausible explanation: the ex...
Article
Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a growing source of stress for organisms and communities worldwide. These include species associated with sandy beaches, which consume and process stranded seaweeds (wrack) in these ecosystems. This study assessed the influence of ALAN on the activity and feeding behaviour of Americorchestia longicornis, a promin...
Article
Full-text available
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a key technology to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial processes in a feasible, substantial, and timely manner. For geological CO2 storage to be safe, reliable, and accepted by society, robust strategies for CO2 leakage detection, quantification and management are crucial. The STEMM-CCS (Strate...
Preprint
Full-text available
Can experimental studies on the impacts of ocean acidification be trusted? That question was raised in early 2020 when a high-profile paper failed to corroborate previously-observed impacts of high CO2 on the behaviour of coral reef fish. New information on the methodologies used in the replicated studies now provides the explanation: the experimen...
Article
Full-text available
In coastal temperate environments, many processes known to affect the exchange of particulate and dissolved matter between the seafloor and the water column follow cyclical patterns of intra-annual variation. This study assesses the extent to which these individual short term temporal variations affect specific direct drivers of seafloor-water exch...
Article
Full-text available
Regulation of extracellular acid-base balance, while maintaining energy metabolism, is recognised as an important aspect when defining an organism's sensitivity to environmental changes. This study investigated the haemolymph buffering capacity and energy metabolism (oxygen consumption, haemolymph [l-lactate] and [protein]) in early benthic juvenil...
Article
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factors, which are identified in this review and may be moderated by others, such as currents, granulometry, nutrient and matter inputs, as well as living organisms. In turn, the occurrence of exchanges can influence adjacent environments and organisms. Major gaps in the present knowledge include the temporal and spatial variation in many of the pr...
Article
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Bycatch is one of the key threats to juvenile marine turtles in the Mediterranean Sea. As fishing methods are regional or habitat specific, the susceptibility of marine turtles may differ according to inter- and intra-population variations in foraging ecology. An understanding of these variations is necessary to assess bycatch susceptibility and to...
Article
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Aim Using a combination of satellite telemetry and stable isotope analysis (SIA), our aim was to identify foraging grounds of loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) at important rookeries in the Mediterranean, examine foraging ground fidelity, and across 25 years determine the proportion of nesting females recruiting from each foraging region to a ma...
Article
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Abstract Organisms inhabiting the intertidal zone have been used to study natural ecophysiological responses and adaptations to thermal stress because these organisms are routinely exposed to high‐temperature conditions for hours at a time. While intertidal organisms may be inherently better at withstanding temperature stress due to regular exposur...
Article
Seaweeds are important components of near‐shore ecosystems as primary producers, foundation species and biogeochemical engineers. Seaweed communities are likely to alter under predicted climate change scenarios. We tested the physiological responses of three perennial, turf‐building, intertidal rhodophytes, Mastocarpus stellatus, Osmundea pinnatifi...
Article
Benthic communities, critical to the health and function of marine ecosystems, are under increasing pressure from anthropogenic impacts such as pollution, eutrophication and climate change. In order to refine predictions of likely future changes in benthic communities resulting from these impacts, we must first better constrain their responses to n...
Article
Full-text available
Anthropogenic stressors can alter the structure and functioning of infaunal communities, which are key drivers of the carbon cycle in marine soft sediments. Nonetheless, the compounded effects of anthropogenic stressors on carbon fluxes in soft benthic systems remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated the cumulative effects of ocean acidificati...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Respuestas interespecíficas y ontogenéticas diferenciales a la contaminación lumínica artificial en la noche (ALAN) impulsan cambios estructurales en una comunidad de artrópodos de playas arenosas Interspecific and ontogenetic differential responses to artificial light at night (ALAN) drive structural changes in a sandy beach arthropod community Ac...
Article
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Macroalgae drive the largest CO2 flux fixed globally by marine macrophytes. Most of the resulting biomass is exported through the coastal ocean as detritus and yet almost no field measurements have verified its potential net sequestration in marine sediments. This gap limits the scope for the inclusion of macroalgae within blue carbon schemes that...
Article
Coastal habitats, in particular sandy beaches, are becoming increasingly exposed to artificial light pollution at night (ALAN). Yet, only a few studies have this far assessed the effects of ALAN on the species inhabiting these ecosystems. In this study we assessed the effects of ALAN on Tylos spinulosus, a prominent wrack-consumer isopod living in...
Article
Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) is an increasing global problem that, despite being widely recognized in terrestrial systems, has been studied much less in marine habitats. In this study we investigated the effect of ALAN on behavioral and physiological traits of Concholepas concholepas, an important keystone species of the south-eastern Pacific c...
Article
Full-text available
Stable isotope analysis (SIA) has become a powerful and widely utilised tool in ecological studies, and more specifically has been used to answer conservation questions regarding key marine indicator species including marine turtles. Undertaking an exhaustive review of peerreviewed literature, we summarise the current knowledge of marine turtle spa...
Article
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Free Ocean CO2 Enrichment (FOCE) experiments are a relatively recent development in ocean acidification research, designed to address the need for in situ, long-term, community level experiments. FOCE studies have been conducted across different marine benthic habitats and regions, from Antarctica to the tropics. Based on this previous research we...
Article
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Benthic macrofauna, as an element of rich and diverse benthic communities of the shelf seas, play a key role in marine biogeochemical cycles and support a wide range of ecosystem services. To better understand how macrofauna affects mass and energy fluxes within the seabed and between the bed and the pelagic, it is fundamental to characterise their...
Article
The increase of global light emissions in recent years has highlighted the need for urgent evaluation of their impacts on the behaviour, ecology and physiology of organisms. Numerous species exhibit daily cycles or strong scototaxic behaviours that could potentially be influenced if natural lighting conditions or cycles are disrupted. Artificial Li...
Article
The structure and resilience of benthic communities in coastal and estuarine ecosystems can be strongly affected by human mediated disturbances, such as nutrient enrichment, often leading to changes in a food webs function. In this study, we used the Ecopath model (EwE) to examine two case studies where deliberate management actions aimed at reduci...
Article
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Dynamic energy budget (DEB) theory offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the overall physiological performance (growth, development, respiration, reproduction, etc.) of an organism over the course of its life cycle. We present here a simplified DEB model for the swimming crab Liocarcinus depurator. To the best of our knowledge, this is...
Preprint
Full-text available
Changes in coloration enable animals to refine their camouflage to match different visual environments. Such plasticity provides ecological benefits and could potentially be exploited to support conservation or stock enhancement efforts. One application could be ensuring that hatchery-reared animals, reared to stock wild populations, are appropriat...
Article
Despite a wealth of methods currently proposed by the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) to assess macro-benthic integrity, determining good ecological status (GES) and assessing ecosystem recovery following anthropogenic degradation is still one of the biggest challenges in marine ecology research. In this study, our aim was to test a number...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The proposed storage of CO 2 in sub-seabed geological reservoirs, known as Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS), could make a practical and significant contribution to reducing atmospheric CO 2 emissions thereby alleviating environmental and ecological damage due to climate change and ocean acidification. However, before any new marine activity...
Article
Full-text available
Research into the effects of reduced pH caused by rising CO2 on echinoderms has been strongly biased toward those groups which rely heavily on calcification, such as sea urchins. There is very limited information available for groups that are less reliant on calcification, such as sea cucumbers. Moreover, plasticity in physiology and behavior in ho...
Article
While it is recognised that the nature of the sediment is a major driver of benthic macro-infaunal community structure, it is also true that diverse environmental factors determine the distribution and composition of sediments. Among those factors are depth, tidal stress and seasonal stratification of the water column. In the Celtic Sea an area of...
Article
Within coastal marine habitats, intense nutrient cycling and near-seabed primary production rates are strongly influenced by the transport and transformation of materials within the sediment and across the sediment-water interface. Through processes such as bioturbation and bio-irrigation, benthic infauna play a significant role in mediating this t...
Chapter
Ocean acidification is a closely linked consequence of increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, involving multiple changes in seawater chemistry. Observed long-term trends are superimposed on natural variability over a range of space and time scales. The future scale and impacts of ocean acidification depend on how rapidly CO2 emissions c...
Article
Many biological processes underpin ecosystem functioning and health. Determining changes in these processes following disturbance is crucial in assessing the wider impacts on ecosystem function and ultimately ecosystem services. Whilst the focus is often on whether disturbance drives changes in ecosystem function through mortality, sub-lethal effec...
Article
Full-text available
Continental shelf sediments are globally important for biogeochemical activity. Quantification of shelf-scale stocks and fluxes of carbon and nutrients requires the extrapolation of observations made at limited points in space and time. The procedure for selecting exemplar sites to form the basis of this up-scaling is discussed in relation to a UK-...
Article
Full-text available
Results from a 1D setup of the European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (ERSEM) biogeochemical model were compared with new observations collected under the UK Shelf Seas Biogeochemistry (SSB) programme to assess model performance and clarify elements of shelf-sea benthic biogeochemistry and carbon cycling. Observations from two contrasting sites (mu...
Article
Full-text available
Marine ecosystems are exposed to a range of human-induced climate stressors, in particular changing carbonate chemistry and elevated sea surface temperatures as a consequence of climate change. More research effort is needed to reduce uncertainties about the effects of global-scale warming and acidification for benthic microbial communities, which...
Conference Paper
Legislation for offshore storage has been developing over the last decade or so and is currently most developed in Europe. Although the large-scale operating sites in Europe were started prior to the regulations coming into force, any planned sites will need to meet these regulatory requirements. Our review of monitoring experiences from both the o...
Article
Global concern over increasing CO2 emissions, and the resultant CO2 driven temperature rises and changes in seawater chemistry, necessitates the advancement of understanding into how these changes will affect marine life now and in the future. Here we report on an experimental investigation into the effects of increased CO2 concentration and elevat...
Article
Full-text available
Co-occurring global change drivers, such as ocean warming and acidification, can have large impacts on the behaviour, physiology, and health of marine organisms. However, whilst early-life stages are thought to be most sensitive to these impacts, little is known about the individual level processes by which such impacts take place. Here, using meso...
Article
The processes and patterns seen in coastal benthic communities can be strongly influenced by the overlying pelagic environmental conditions. Integrating long-term biological and environmental data (both benthic and pelagic) can give insight into the specific relationships between key benthic functional groups and natural temporal changes in the mar...
Article
Full-text available
Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production system in the world, generating more than half of the global seafood harvested today. These type of activities are crucial to provide key nutritional components for humanity in the future as populations worldwide are increasing and the demands for securing food resources are imperative. Multiple so...
Data
Supplementary Figures, Supplementary Tables and Supplementary References
Article
Full-text available
Co-occurring global change drivers, such as ocean warming and acidification, can have large impacts on the behaviour, physiology and health of marine organisms. However, whilst early life stages are thought to be most sensitive to these impacts, little is known about the individual level processes by which such impacts take place. Here, using mesoc...
Article
Warming and ocean acidification have been shown to have significant impacts on marine organisms. However, none studies have addressed the impact of these two stressors on harpacticoid copepod community structure. A mesocosm experiment was conducted to assess the potential interactive impact of different levels of elevated CO2 and temperature on an...
Article
Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), involving the injection of CO2 into the sub-seabed, is being promoted worldwide as a feasible option for reducing the anthropogenic CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. However, the effects on the marine ecosystems of potential CO2 leakages originating from these storage sites have only recently received scie...