Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/P009700/1
Exploring the metabolic responses of marine fishes to climate change using stable carbon isotope composition of otoliths
Training Grant Award
- Lead Supervisor:
- Dr CNG Trueman, University of Southampton, Sch of Ocean and Earth Science
- Grant held at:
- University of Southampton, Sch of Ocean and Earth Science
- Science Area:
- Marine
- Overall Classification:
- Marine
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Science Topics:
- Behavioural modelling
- Environmental factors
- Fitness
- Foraging behaviour
- Phenotypic plasticity
- Behavioural Ecology
- Abstract:
- Commercial marine fish populations currently face historically high levels of environmental stressors including climate change, habitat loss and fishing. Understanding mechanisms driving large-scale responses to environmental change is one of the greatest challenges in modern ecology, particularly when independent stressors such as fishing pressure and warming sea temperatures combine to produce cumulative effects. Many studies predicting the responses of commercial fish populations to climate change assume that individuals will move to areas where climate conditions are more favourable. Field studies, however, indicate that individuals are constrained within their habitats, so that the capacity to adapt to change by moving is reduced. Identifying the adaptive potential inherent in a population, and understanding those processes that modify adaptive responses is therefore essential for predicting how fish populations will respond to environmental change and fishing. In this project we use individual field metabolic rate as a tool to study adaptation. Field metabolic rate is the total energetic cost an animal incurs operating in its environment, combining basal metabolism and the energetic costs of behaviour. Field metabolic rate therefore reflects both physiological and behavioural responses to environmental drivers. Increases in environmental temperature will tend to increase field metabolic rate because of the influence of temperature on basal metabolism. Behavioural or physiological adaptations will lower the observed effect of a given environmental temperature change on individual field metabolic rates. Comparing how the distribution of individual field metabolic rates within populations change in response to temperature can therefore reveal the extent of adaptive capacity and its sensitivity to different conditions. Fish otoliths (calcium carbonate structures in the fish ear) provide an isotopic record of relative field metabolic rate that has yet to be fully exploited. Millions of otoliths are sampled each year, and archives covering decades of fish samples exist in fisheries laboratories globally. Unlocking the metabolic record contained in otoliths may open a new dimension to climate change ecology and fisheries management. This project uses plaice as a model species to (1) determine the extent of individual variance in field metabolic rate within a population (2) assess how the distribution of individual field metabolic rates differs between populations and (3) determine how population-scale realised field metabolic rates respond to differing combinations of thermal and fishing induced stress. Results from the project will provide a new understanding of individual reponse to warming sea temperatures that will inform next generation models of population responses to environmental change.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/P009700/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- DTG - directed
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Industrial CASE
This training grant award has a total value of £88,292
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - Fees | Total - Student Stipend | Total - RTSG |
|---|---|---|
| £17,295 | £59,997 | £11,000 |
If you need further help, please read the user guide.