Alejandra V. Gonzalez1, Ursula Romero1, Maria Fernanda Gómez1,2, Fadia Tala2, Julio Vasquez2,
1Departamento de Ciencias Ecológicas, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile, 2Departamento de Biología Marina, Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico en Algas (CIDTA), Instituto Milenio en Socioecología Costera (SECOS), Facultad de Ciencias del Mar, Universidad Católica del Norte.
Kelps forest ecosystems are biodiversity hotspots that provide goods and services worldwide. They are however threatened due to increases in marine heatwaves, ENSO events, and climate change. Chimeric seaweeds are created by coalescence of two or more “parent” plants in a single entity. These chimeric individuals may have a higher tolerance to environmental changes compared to genetically homogeneous organisms. To test whether chimerism improves higher-temperature tolerance in the kelps Lessonia spicata and L. berteroana, we used genetically homogenous kelp (control) and chimeras (treatment – Patent CL201701827). We created chimeras with strains from the same population to avoid mixing strains. We then incubated plants from each species for 30 days at three contrasting temperatures: a) 12°C, the present mean of Chile; b) 15°C, 50 years projected prediction; and c) 21°C, 100 years projected prediction. We tested how these temperature treatments affected the specific growth rate of the chimeric kelp compared to the homogenous kelp. Our results indicate that chimeras showed a higher growth rate in the three treatments than homogenous controls. This result was independent of the origin or species population. Our results suggest that chimeric kelps have higher thermal thresholds. Therefore, we suggest chimeric kelps as Nature-Based Solutions (Nbs) to restore kelp forests and reduce the vulnerability of kelp forests to ocean warming.
Financial support: FONDEF ID20I10167, Packard 2021- 73304