While climate change is leading to an overall warming of the oceans, it is also leading to more frequent and greater extremes. Of these extremes, marine heatwaves have become a focus of research due to the disruption they are expected to cause to marine ecosystems. Marine heatwaves are defined as anomalously warm events that lasts for more than 5 days with temperatures warmer than the 90th percentile of the 30-year historical baseline environmental temperature (Hobday et al., 2016). With the impact of marine heatwaves, or other acute heat events, expected to increase, it is important to gain a clear understanding of the mechanisms underlying the response of marine ectotherms and the scales at which responses manifest.

The vast majority of marine organisms are ectotherms and temperature is, therefore, a key environmental variable which sets body temperatures and the rates of all biological systems. However, the effects of temperature will not work in isolation and acute heat events will have synergistic effects with other climate change stressors and different species tolerances are expected to alter ecological interactions, leading to changes in ecosystem structure. Understanding these ecosystem consequences requires knowledge of the scale of response to climate change. Physiological responses occur over a variety of temporal scales, from acute resistance mechanisms, through acclimation capacity, to adaptive changes that lead to differences in resilience between populations. Upper temperature limits of marine ectotherms also vary over geographic scales, being correlated with microhabitat, local site conditions and conditions across species ranges. 

This special issue aims to bring together a collection of manuscripts that provide insights into the mechanisms underlying responses to extreme heat events, the scales at which responses manifest and their ecosystem consequences. The aim of this collection is to synthesise the latest research, highlighting common themes for future research.

Submission Guidelines

Each submission will undergo a rigorous peer-review process, ensuring that accepted papers contribute substantively to the field's knowledge base. All manuscripts need to be submitted no later than 15 October 2024 via the JMBA ScholarOne site.

For detailed manuscript preparation instructions and submission guidelines, please refer to JMBA's Author Instructions. When submitting your article, please select 'Marine Heatwaves' from the special issue drop down.

If you have any questions, please contact Sarah Maddox, Publisher at sarah.maddox@cambridge.org.