Jérémy de Bonville, a doctoral candidate at the Université de Montréal, discovered key information for climate scientists. How'd he do it? With fish, of course.
Over the course of his internships in Scandinavia, he saw how fish from different habitats responded to rising heat levels, as the university reported. Such research is crucial on a planet with increasingly rising temperatures, which the ocean gets the brunt of.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, "The ocean absorbs most of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions."
This heat-trapping pollution can disrupt marine animals' ecosystems, damaging breeding grounds and spurring mass migrations. Such activity could cause a chain reaction across the entire planet — and it won't spare humans. If fish populations sharply decrease, it could impact fishers' livelihoods and cause food shortages.
To predict timelines and more specific possible outcomes, scientists usually turn to climate models. However, this study identified a gap in popular climate knowledge: How exactly did fish species vary when adapting to temperature changes?
De Bonville wanted to find out.
It started during an internship in Norway, where he observed zebrafish's response to increased heat, or thermal acclimation.
It continued in Sweden. This time, he studied three wild fish species, each from different environments: the three-spined stickleback, European flounder, and goldsinny wrasse.
"The first two live in shallow coastal waters, at a depth of one or two meters," De Bonville told UdeM Nouvelles, "while the goldsinny wrasse inhabits deeper waters where temperatures are more stable."
De Bonville and his fellow researchers raised the tanks' temperature by 0.3 degrees Celsius (about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit) per minute until the fish lost balance. Once that happened, they were transferred to cooler waters to recover.
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Sure thing 👍 Through this method, De Bonville and his team discovered that fish can tolerate higher water temperatures than previously thought possible.
"Our hypothesis was that a fish accustomed to 20 degrees Celsius water could tolerate a maximum of, say, 35 C," De Bonville told UdeM Nouvelles, "but if it acclimated to 25 C water, then its maximum tolerance might go up and reach 38 C."
Their reactions weren't equal, however. The shallow-water fish were able to adapt more quickly than the goldsinny wrasse and European flounder, both of which tried to avoid the heat rather than acclimate to it.
This could indicate that these fish are less likely to survive warmer waters, though more research is needed. Either way, the data is there for scientists to use to their advantage.
De Bonville published the research to help scientists develop accurate climate-impact models, but he's not stopping there. He's continuing his work with Andréa Serres, a master's student. Together, they're studying how parasites affect the pumpkin fish's ability to acclimate to different temperatures.
This work can provide the necessary research for climate solutions. As the research paper states, "Understanding species-specific thermal plasticity is important for accurately modeling the projected impacts of climate change."
However, De Bonville urged caution. "We're not there yet," he said, per the university report. "Our results provide insights into the strategies some species might use, depending on their natural environment: Some rely on rapid physiological acclimation, others on avoidance behaviors."
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