Seawater carbonate chemistry and fecundity in a serial broadcast spawning fish

Experiments examining fish sensitivities to future oceanic CO2 levels have greatly expanded over past decades and identified many potentially affected traits. Curiously, data on reproductive trait responses to high CO2 are still scarce, despite their strong link to Darwinian fitness and thus to population vulnerability to ocean acidification. We conducted two rearing experiments on the first broadcast-spawning marine fish model (Atlantic silverside, Menidia menidia) to examine how long-term and novel whole life-cycle exposures to predicted future CO2 levels (∼2,000 µatm) affect laboratory spawning, temperature-specific reproductive investment, fecundity, and size distributions of maturing oocytes. At low temperatures (17°C), female body size and therefore potential fecundity (FPot, oocytes/female) slightly increased with CO2, while relative fecundity (FRel, oocytes/g female) remained unaffected. At high temperatures (24°C), high CO2 substantially reduced both FPot (−19%) and FRel (−28%) relative to control treatments. Irrespective of CO2, females at 24°C grew larger and heavier than those at 17°C, and although larger females produced larger oocytes at some developmental stages, they also had lower gonadosomatic indices and lower FRel. Our findings contrast with most previous studies and thus highlight the need to investigate reproductive impacts of increasing CO2 on multiple fish species with contrasting life history strategies.