Abstract

Pioneering papers by Munday and colleagues have reported profound effects of end-of-century ocean acidification—simulated by experimentally elevated CO₂ levels in seawater—on the behaviour of coral reef fishes, such as extreme attraction of prey species to the chemical cues of their predators. Later studies by the same group reported that a range of other behaviours of coral reef fishes, including swimming activity, behavioural lateralization, homing and different predator avoidance behaviours, were also impaired by ocean acidification and that predator-escape behaviours in a coral reef mollusc were also impaired through the same physiological mechanism reported for fishes (that is, through effects on ‘GABA_A-like receptors’), which led to the idea that “elevated-CO₂ could cause behavioural impairment in a broad suite of marine animals”. In 2014, we initiated experiments to further explore the physiological mechanism(s) that impaired coral reef fish behaviour in elevated levels of CO₂; however, we immediately ran into a problem: despite several attempts, and many improvements to the standard methodology used in this field, we were unable to observe an effect of ocean acidification on fish behaviour. Our initial goal changed from what was meant to be a series of original experiments into a three-year effort to transparently examine behavioural effects of ocean acidification in coral reef fishes; the findings of our study are the basis for the accompanying Comment by Munday et al.

Published in

Nature
2020, Volume: 586, number: 7830, pages: E25-E27

SLU Authors

• Sundin, Josefin

  • Department of Aquatic Resources (SLU Aqua), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG14 Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development


UKÄ Subject classification

Fish and Aquacultural Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2804-9

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/108557