The ecophysiological response of mussels in mesocosms with reduced inorganic nutrient loads: simulations with the model EMMY

EMMY is an ecophysiological model of the growth and reproduction of a single mussel (Mytilus edulis L.). It contains feedback loops in the uptake and metabolism of food and in the partitioning of carbon and nitrogen to the internal state variables somatic tissue, storage, organic shell matrix and gametes. In this paper EMMY is used to simulate individual mussel growth in a series of mesocosm experiments with different inorganic nutrient loads (N and P). The experiments explore the impact of eutrophication reduction scenarios on mussel growth under defined and controlled conditions. In earlier studies EMMY was calibrated using expert knowledge on growth and reproduction during a period of 5 years. The resulting calibrated model was validated for system inputs and observations of three ecosystems with significantly different food and silt concentrations. EMMY reproduced the mussel growth sufficiently accurate in ecosystems with moderate or high food concentrations. In this study EMMY was adapted in order to cope with low food concentrations, then recalibrated (using the original calibration data and procedure) and applied without further calibration to 3 replicated mesocosm experiments. The EMMY simulations in this study show the ecophysiological response of mussels to different food (phytoplankton and detritus) concentrations. It is concluded that the mussels can adapt to significantly reduced food concentrations, due to inorganic nutrient load reduction, and still maintain growth.