OxyTempFish · The Metabolic Niche Framework – Linking Metabolic Changes and Behavioural Responses of Fishes to Climate Change.
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-09-01 → 2025-10-07
- EU contribution
- €202,159
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The Metabolic Niche Framework – Linking Metabolic Changes and Behavioural Responses of Fishes to Climate Change.
Climate change is driving rising ocean temperatures, increasing the severity and intensity of heatwaves, and expanding areas with low oxygen levels. These changes are already affecting the abundance and distribution of fishes, with more pronounced effects expected in the future. Fish metabolism is constrained by both elevated temperatures and reduced oxygen levels; yet little is known about the role of metabolic changes in shaping the responses of fishes to these environmental stressors. Understanding how climate change affects the abundance and distribution of fishes through changes in their metabolism is important for managing fisheries that support food security and livelihoods, protecting marine biodiversity under the EU Biodiversity Strategy and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, and forecasting ecosystem changes that will affect coastal communities and economies across Europe. Using zebrafish as a model species, this fellowship aimed to (1) establish a Metabolic Niche Framework to describe how fish metabolism changes in response to concurrent variation in water temperature and oxygen levels, and (2) use this framework to investigate the role of metabolic changes in shaping the thermal tolerance limits of zebrafish and their behavioural responses to changes in temperature and oxygen. The fellowship successfully established the Metabolic Niche Framework, demonstrating that thermal tolerance limits and their hypoxia sensitivity depend critically on acclimation temperature and warming rate, rather than fixed species properties as previously assumed. Furthermore, behavioral responses to progressive hypoxia were shown to correlate with the metabolic traits underlying physiological hypoxia tolerance, revealing a direct link between metabolic changes and behavior.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Anthropogenic warming of the oceans and the expansion of aquatic oxygen deficient (hypoxic) “dead zones” are changing the abundance and distribution of fishes, with more pronounced effects expected in the future. The behavioural responses of fishes to environmental changes may influence species’ distribution patterns through habitat selection and modification of depth and latitude ranges. Fish behaviour and metabolism have been linked in several species, but despite the profound effects of hypoxia and temperature on fish metabolism, virtually nothing is known about how the behavioural responses of fishes to hypoxia and temperature are affected by metabolic changes. The proposal combines my expertise in fish metabolism with Dr Jutfelt’s knowledge on zebrafish behaviour to answer a call by the international scientific community to establish and test a comprehensive experimental framework for studying how the responses of fishes to aquatic hypoxia and ocean warming are affected by changes in their metabolism. Furthermore, the project utilises unique selectively bred zebrafish lines to assess how climate-driven selection affects the identified relationships between behavioural responses and metabolic changes. The research results will contribute significantly to conservation planning by providing the necessary mechanisms to forecast changes in species distributions with anthropogenic climate change. The mentorship, training, and practical work of this project will provide the Fellow with the necessary skills to become a research leader in fish ecophysiology and climate change biology. The expected outcome of this project is a robust framework for use by scientists to better understand and predict the effects of climate change on fishes worldwide. This new knowledge and predictive power should provide significant benefits to policy makers and management agencies in the ongoing effort to mitigate the impacts of climate change on fish and fisheries.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU · TrondheimCoordinatorNorway
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union