Munawar Khalil

The effects of ocean acidification on biomineralization and  physiological responses of a tropical marine bivalvia species

Over the last few decades, researchers have intensively investigated the effect of ocean acidification (OA) on marine calcifying organisms that precipitate calcite and aragonite (i.e., gastropod, bivalvia, crustacean, cnidarian), especially the impact it has on the biomineralization, respiration, survival, immunology, growth, reproduction, metabolism and other bio-morph-physiological structures. Furthermore, this phenomenon will drive consequences for community structure, population dynamics and ecosystem function.

My PhD projected focuses on assessing the process of biomineralization and physiological responses of tropical marine bivalvia species under previous, current and future pCO2 scenarios (OA stressor conditions: declining pH level). Besides, this research project also aims at intensely investigating the response of tropical bivalvia organs, including cell adaptation and reaction to the stressor. I adopt OA experimental laboratory procedures using specific concentrations of CO2 to bioindicator species in order to address the research question. Exposing tropical bivalvia species to declining pH levels will give us the wide-ranging information on how tropical bivalvia reacts to maintain and develop their calcification process, growth, metabolism strategies and other survivability exponents.