After the invasion of the actually pretty friendly
These gelatinous sea creatures are called pyrosomes, which are made up of colonies of individuals that typically live in
However, researchers wanted to understand the ecosystem-wide effects of the marine heatwaves in order to figure out what was happening for all organisms involved and how best to manage the situation. “If you look at single species interactions, you’re likely to miss a lot,” said lead author Dylan Gomes in a
To do this, researchers used food web models, which provide an estimate of the energy flow and feeding relationships between the organisms living in an ecosystem. They applied these models to the northern California Current, comparing the ecosystem before and after the
“Food web models allow us to estimate the cascading effects of marine heatwaves throughout the ecosystem,” Gomes
Though it’s not exactly their fault, the results suggest that pyrosomes are absorbing a lot of the available energy – not just because there’s a lot of them feeding on plankton, therefore taking energy away from other plankton feeders, but because they themselves aren’t really eaten by much else in the
“What I found both alarming and fascinating is the extent to which these pyrosomes absorb all of the energy in the system,” said co-author Joshua Stewart. “Because nothing else really eats the pyrosomes, they just become this dead end, and that energy is not available for anyone else in the ecosystem.”
This could end up affecting other members of the ecosystem further up in the food chain, such as fish and marine mammals. The authors suggest that, in turn, this could have an economic impact on fisheries, as well as on efforts to recover and conserve endangered species.
That being said, for the moment, the ecosystem appears to be stable. However, if things do start to change – particularly if marine heatwaves continue to occur – the researchers hope that their findings will help to inform the tools that’ll be used to deal with it.
The study is published in