Taking the Pulse of Resilience in Conserving Seagrass Meadows

Foundational habitats such as seagrasses and coral reefs are at severe risk globally from climate warming. Infectious disease associated with warming events is both a cause of decline and an indicator of stress in both habitats. Since new approaches are needed to detect refugia and design climate-smart networks of marine protected areas, we test the hypothesis that the health of eelgrass (Zostera marina) in temperate ecosystems can serve as a proxy indicative of higher resilience and help pinpoint refugia. Eelgrass meadows worldwide are at risk from environmental stressors, including climate warming and disease. Disease outbreaks of Labyrinthula zosterae are associated with recent, widespread declines in eelgrass meadows throughout the San Juan Islands, Washington, USA. Machine language learning, drone surveys, and molecular diagnostics reveal climate impacts on seagrass wasting disease prevalence (proportion of infected individuals) and severity (proportion of infected leaf area) from San Diego, California, to Alaska. Given that warmer temperatures favor many pathogens such as L. zosterae, we hypothesize that absent or low disease severity in meadows could indicate eelgrass resilience to climate and pathogenic stressors. Regional surveys showed the San Juan Islands as a hotspot for both high disease prevalence and severity, and surveys throughout the Northeast Pacific indicated higher prevalence and severity in intertidal, rather than subtidal, meadows. Further, among sites with eelgrass declines, losses were more pronounced at sites with shallower eelgrass meadows. We suggest that deeper meadows with the lowest disease severity will be refuges from future warming and pathogenic stressors in the Northeast Pacific. Disease monitoring may be a useful conservation approach for marine foundation species, as low or absent disease severity can pinpoint resilient refugia that should be prioritized for future conservation efforts. Even in declining or at-risk habitats, disease surveys can help identify meadows that may contain especially resilient individuals for future restoration efforts. Our approach of using disease as a pulse point for eelgrass resilience to multiple stressors could be applied to other habitats such as coral reefs to inform conservation and management decisions.