Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.

Sec. Marine Biogeochemistry

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1645755

This article is part of the Research TopicOcean Acidification in Latin AmericaView all 11 articles

Effects of Ocean Acidification on Fatty Acid Composition in the Antarctic Snail Neobuccinum eatoni

Provisionally accepted
NATALIA ServettoNATALIA Servetto1*Marleen De TrochMarleen De Troch2R. Gaston AlurraldeR. Gaston Alurralde3,4Luciana FerreroLuciana Ferrero1Maria Carla De AranzamendiMaria Carla De Aranzamendi1Ricardo SahadeRicardo Sahade1
  • 1CONICET Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal (IDEA), Cordoba, Argentina
  • 2Ghent University, Ghent, East Flanders, Belgium
  • 3Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, Helsinki Commission, Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland
  • 4Stockholm University, Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Select one of your emails

You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:

Notify me on publication

Please enter your email address:

If you already have an account, please login

You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here

Ocean acidification (OA), a consequence of increased atmospheric CO₂ absorption by the oceans, poses a significant threat to marine organisms. This study examines the effects of OA (pH 7.70 ± 0.09) on the fatty acid (FA) composition of the Antarctic snail Neobuccinum eatoni over a two-month experimental period (from December 2015 to March 2016). Significant tissue-specific changes were observed, particularly in the mantle and gill, with notable alterations in long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs) such as 22:5n-3, 22:6n-3, and 24:5n-6 under LpH conditions. Elevated LC-PUFA levels in the mantle suggest a protective response to oxidative stress. At the same time, shifts in the n-3/n-6 ratios in the gill indicate changes in immune function and anti-inflammatory response. Indicators of homeoviscous adaptation (HVA), including PUFA/SFA ratios and mean chain length (MCL), highlight the organism's biochemical strategies to maintain membrane fluidity in the mantles under environmental stress. This is the first study to report FA responses to elevated pCO₂ in an Antarctic snail, underscoring the potential of FAs as biomarkers of environmental responses to stressors.

Keywords: Southern Ocean, gastropod, CO₂ anthropogenic emissions, lipid biochemistry, Benthos

Received: 12 Jun 2025; Accepted: 13 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Servetto, De Troch, Alurralde, Ferrero, De Aranzamendi and Sahade. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: NATALIA Servetto, biol.nataliaservetto@gmail.com

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material