Lucey, Noelle M; Lombardi, Chiara; Florio, Maurizio; DeMarchi, Lucia; Nannini, Matteo; Rundle, Simon; Gambi, Maria Cristina; Calosi, Piero (2016): In-situ seawater pH and temperature during and fitness traits of a calcifying polychaete after a reciprocal transplant experiment in June-July near Ischia, italy [dataset publication series]. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.861355,

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Supplement to: Lucey, NM et al. (2016): An in situ assessment of local adaptation in a calcifying polychaete from a shallow CO2 vent system. Evolutionary Applications, 9(9), 1054-1071, https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.12400

Ocean acidification (OA) is likely to exert selective pressure on natural populations. Our ability to predict which marine species will adapt to OA, and what underlies this adaptive potential, are of high conservation and resource management priority. Using a naturally low pH vent site in the Mediterranean Sea (Castello Aragonese, Ischia) mirroring projected future OA conditions, we carried out a reciprocal transplant experiment to investigate the relative importance of phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation in two populations of the sessile, calcifying polychaete /Simplaria /sp. (Annelida, Serpulidae, Spirorbinae): one residing in low pH and the other from a nearby ambient (i.e. high) pH site. We measured a suite of fitness related traits (i.e. survival, reproductive output, maturation, population growth) and tube growth rates in laboratory-bred F2 generation individuals from both populations reciprocally transplanted back into both ambient and low pH /in situ/ habitats. Both populations showed lower expression in all traits, but increased tube growth rates, when exposed to low pH compared to high pH conditions, regardless of their site of origin suggesting that local adaptation to low pH conditions has not occurred. We also found comparable levels of plasticity in the two populations investigated, suggesting no influence of long-term exposure to low pH on the ability of populations to adjust their phenotype. Despite high variation in trait values among sites and the relatively extreme conditions at sites close to the vents (pH < 7.36), response trends were consistent across traits. Hence, our data suggest that, for /Simplaria /and possibly other calcifiers, neither local adaptations nor sufficient phenotypic plasticity levels appear to suffice in order to compensate for the negative impacts of OA on long-term survival. Our work also underlines the utility of field experiments in natural environments subjected to high level of /p/CO_2 for elucidating the potential for adaptation to future scenarios of OA.

The first dataset includes data on the fitness traits assessed after the reciprocal transplant experiment, the second includes seawater (pH), temperature, and time of measurement, taken hourly at the low pH site (S2), during the reciprocal transplant experiment. The water parameters were taken hourly, from June 17, 2015 to July 6, 2015.