For many historical and contemporary experimental studies in marine biology, seawater carbonate chemistry remains a ghost factor, an uncontrolled, unmeasured, and often dynamic variable affecting experimental organisms or the treatments to which investigators subject them. We highlight how environmental variability, such as seasonal upwelling and biological respiration, drive variation in seawater carbonate chemistry that can influence laboratory experiments in unintended ways and introduce a signal consistent with ocean acidification. As the impacts of carbonate chemistry on biochemical pathways that underlie growth, development, reproduction, and behavior become better understood, the hidden effects of this previously overlooked variable need to be acknowledged. Here we bring this emerging challenge to the attention of the wider community of experimental biologists who rely on access to organisms and water from marine and estuarine laboratories and who may benefit from explicit considerations of a growing literature on the pervasive effects of aquatic carbonate chemistry changes.

中文翻译：

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实验室碳酸盐化学的幽灵因素困扰着我们的实验

对于海洋生物学的许多历史和当代实验研究，海水碳酸盐化学仍然是一个幽灵因素，一个不受控制、无法测量且通常是动态的变量，会影响实验生物或研究人员对其进行的处理。我们强调了环境变化（例如季节性上升流和生物呼吸）如何驱动海水碳酸盐化学的变化，这可能会以意想不到的方式影响实验室实验并引入与海洋酸化一致的信号。随着碳酸盐化学对作为生长、发育、繁殖和行为基础的生化途径的影响得到更好的理解，这个以前被忽视的变量的隐藏影响需要得到承认。