Atlantic herring () is a benthic spawner, therefore its eggs are prone to encounter different water conditions during embryonic development, with bottom waters often depleted of oxygen and enriched in CO. Some Atlantic herring spawning grounds are predicted to be highly affected by ongoing Ocean Acidification and Warming with water temperature increasing by up to +3°C and CO levels reaching ca. 1000 μatm (RCP 8.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Ocean acidification and warming are happening fast in the Arctic but little is known about the effects of ocean acidification and warming on the physiological performance and survival of Arctic fish.
Results: In this study we investigated the metabolic background of performance through analyses of cardiac mitochondrial function in response to control and elevated water temperatures and CO of two gadoid fish species, Polar cod (), an endemic Arctic species, and Atlantic cod (), which is a temperate to cold eurytherm and currently expanding into Arctic waters in the wake of ocean warming. We studied their responses to the above-mentioned drivers and their acclimation potential through analysing the cardiac mitochondrial function in permeabilised cardiac muscle fibres after 4 months of incubation at different temperatures (Polar cod: 0, 3, 6, 8 °C and Atlantic cod: 3, 8, 12, 16 °C), combined with exposure to present (400μatm) and year 2100 (1170μatm) levels of CO.
Thermal tolerance windows serve as a powerful tool for estimating the vulnerability of marine species and their life stages to increasing temperature means and extremes. However, it remains uncertain to which extent additional drivers, such as ocean acidification, modify organismal responses to temperature. This study investigated the effects of CO -driven ocean acidification on embryonic thermal sensitivity and performance in Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, from the Kattegat.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComp Biochem Physiol B Biochem Mol Biol
September 2013
Mitochondrial plasticity plays a central role in setting the capacity for acclimation of aerobic metabolism in ectotherms in response to environmental changes. We still lack a clear picture if and to what extent the energy metabolism and mitochondrial enzymes of Antarctic fish can compensate for changing temperatures or PCO2 and whether capacities for compensation differ between tissues. We therefore measured activities of key mitochondrial enzymes (citrate synthase (CS), cytochrome c oxidase (COX)) from heart, red muscle, white muscle and liver in the Antarctic fish Notothenia rossii after warm- (7°C) and hypercapnia- (0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Ongoing ocean warming and acidification increasingly affect marine ecosystems, in particular around the Antarctic Peninsula. Yet little is known about the capability of Antarctic notothenioid fish to cope with rising temperature in acidifying seawater. While the whole animal level is expected to be more sensitive towards hypercapnia and temperature, the basis of thermal tolerance is set at the cellular level, with a putative key role for mitochondria.
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