Mike O'Donnell

Email Address: mooseo@u.washington.edu

I am fascinated by the ways in which marine organisms interact with their physical environment. All organisms, regardless of lineage or life history, live in a world governed by a physical framework that controls environmental parameters such as seawater chemistry, hydrodynamic forces and temperature fluctuations. As environmental conditions shift with changing climates, understanding the physical environment as organisms experience it provide mechanistic guides to predict how species distributions may change in response.

My work in the Hofmann lab primarily focused on the effects of ocean acidification during larval development in sea urchins. Increases in atmospheric CO2 levels due to burning of fossils fuels are resulting in a shift towards more acidic oceans. As a result, the myriad marine organisms which produce skeletons from CaCO3 must do so under less-favorable conditions. My research seeks to understand the challenges that changing ocean chemistry will present to ecologically important members of nearshore communities. This project involved developing a gas blending system to simulate future atmospheric conditions within larval culture chambers, growing larvae under predicted future atmospheres and assaying their growth and gene expression.

As of Fall 2008, I have moved to a postdoc position at University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories.

Publications

O'Donnell, M.J., A.E. Todgham, M.A. Sewell, L.M. Hammond, K. Ruggiero, M.L. Zippay and G.E. Hofmann (2009) Ocean acidification alters skeletogenesis and gene expression in larval sea urchins. Marine Ecology Progress Series (in press)

O'Donnell, M.J., L.M. Hammond and G.E. Hofmann (2009) Predicted impact of ocean acidification on a marine invertebrate: elevated CO2 alters response to thermal stress in sea urchin larvae. Marine Biology 156: 439-446.

Place, S.P., O'Donnell, M.J., and Hofmann, G.E. (2008) Gene expression profiling in the intertidal mussel, Mytilus californianus: Assessing physiological response to environmental factors on a biogeographic scale. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Series. 356 1-14.

Helmuth, B., C.D.G. Harley, P. Halpin, M. O'Donnell, G.E. Hofmann and C. Blanchette (2002) Climate change and latitudinal patterns of intertidal thermal stress Science 298: 1015-1017.