Interactive effects of multiple taxonomic groups. Climate warming is identi?ed as the most dominant stressor which, in combination, with other stressors such as ocean Frontiers in Marine Science OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Giandomenico Foti, Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy REVIEWED BY Patricia G. Cardoso, University of Porto, Portugal Judi Hewitt, The University of Auckland, New Zealand *CORRESPONDENCE Shubham Krishna shubham.krishna@noc.ac.uk RECEIVED 16 August 2024 ACCEPTED 05 December 2024 PUBLISHED 09 January 2025 CITATION Krishna S, Lemmen C, Örey S, Rehren J, Pane JD, Mathis M, Püts M, Hokamp S, Pradhan HK, Hasenbein M, Scheffran J and Wirtz KW (2025) Interactive effects of multiple stressors in coastal ecosystems. Front. Mar. Sci. 11:1481734. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1481734 COPYRIGHT © 2025 Krishna, Lemmen, Örey, Rehren, Pane, Mathis, Püts, Hokamp, Pradhan, Hasenbein, Scheffran and Wirtz. 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) and the copyright owner(s) 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. TYPE Systematic Review PUBLISHED 09 January 2025 DOI 10.3389/fmars.2024.1481734acidi?cation, eutrophication, and metal pollution exacerbate adverse effects on physiological traits such as growth rate, ?tness, basal respiration, and size. Phytoplankton appears to be most sensitive to interactions between warming, metal and nutrient pollution. In warm and nutrient-enriched environments, the presence of metals considerably affects the uptake of nutrients, and increases respiration costs and toxin production in phytoplankton. For bivalves, warming and low pH are the most lethal stressors. The combined effect of heat stress and ocean acidi?cation leads to decreased growth rate, shell size, and acid-base regulation capacity in bivalves. However, for a holistic understanding of how coastal food webs will evolve with ongoing changes, we suggest more research on ecosystem-level responses. This can be achieved by combining in-situ observations from controlled environments (e.g. mesocosm experiments) with modelling approaches. KEYWORDSstressors in coastal ecosystems Shubham Krishna1,2*, Carsten Lemmen2, Serra Örey3,4,5, Jennifer Rehren4, Julien Di Pane6, Moritz Mathis2, Miriam Püts4, Sascha Hokamp7, Himansu Kesari Pradhan2,8, Matthias Hasenbein9, Jürgen Scheffran7 and Kai W. Wirtz2 1Ocean BioGeosciences, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom, 2Ecosystem Modelling Group, Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, Geesthacht, Germany, 3Hochschule Bremerhaven, Bremerhaven, Germany, 4Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut, Bremerhaven, Germany, 5School of Mathematics and Science, Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany, 6Electricite´ de France EDF, Paris, France, 7Institute of Geography, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, 8Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Bremerhaven, Germany, 9Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie (BSH), Hamburg, Germany Coastal ecosystems are increasingly experiencing anthropogenic pressures such as climate warming, CO2 increase, metal and organic pollution, over?shing, and resource extraction. Some resulting stressors are more direct like pollution and ?sheries, and others more indirect like ocean acidi?cation, yet they jointly affect marine biota, communities, and entire ecosystems. While single-stressor effects have been widely investigated, the interactive effects of multiple stressors on ecosystems are less researched. In this study, we review the literature onmultiple stressors and their interactive effects in coastal environments across organisms. We classify the interactions into three categories: synergistic, additive, and antagonistic. We found phytoplankton and bivalves to be the most studiedclimate-stressors, anthropogenic-stressors, climate-change, global-change, non- additive-effects, coastal-foodweb, coastal-management frontiersin.org01