Good, AlexandraGomez-Rangel, KateMatt, JosephHollenbeck, ChristopherBahr, Keisha2022-05-092022-05-092022-04https://hdl.handle.net/1969.6/90568The eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, is a valuable foundational species providing critical ecosystem services and an economically valuable fishery and aquaculture industry for the state of Texas. However, Texas’ top commercial fishery will be threatened by population growth, coastal development, pollution, and flooding. In addition, these local threats will interact with global environmental changes, so it is vital to understand the species’ specific stress tolerances and adaptive capacities. This Texas oyster population is divided into two genetically different sub-species found in the Northern and Southern regions of the state, with Corpus Christi Bay acting as the transition zone between the divergent populations. However, few scientific conclusions have been made regarding why there is such vast genetic variation between the two populations of oysters in Texas. Therefore, this project will characterize the individual tolerance thresholds of the genetically different sub-populations to a range of salinities under high temperature using an intermittent flow respirometry technique. The results of this work aim to help predict future risk and resilience of the South Texas oyster population dynamics, aquaculture production, and restoration of ecosystem services. The risk assessment created will contribute to the resiliency of Texas’ coastal oyster reef habitats to climate change by filling the knowledge gap surrounding stress tolerances to dramatic salinity fluctuations and evaluating how the genetically different oyster populations will respond to interacting local and global stressors.en-USAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/stressorsresilienceanthropogenic influenceecosystem servicesclimate changePresentation