Dataset Information

Growth, condition, and maturity schedules of an estuarine fish species change in estuaries following increased hypoxia due to climate change.

ABSTRACT: Understanding challenges posed by climate change to estuaries and their faunas remains a high priority for managing these systems and their communities. Freshwater discharge into a range of estuary types in south-western Australia between 1990 and 2015 is shown to be related to rainfall. This largely accounts for decreases in discharge in this microtidal region being more pronounced on the west coast than south coast, where rainfall decline was less. Results of an oxygen-balance model imply that, as demonstrated by empirical data for the Swan River Estuary, declines in discharge into a range of estuary types would be accompanied by increases in the extent of hypoxia. In 2013-15, growth and body condition of the teleost Acanthopagrus butcheri varied markedly among three permanently open, one intermittently-open, one seasonally-closed and one normally-closed estuary, with average time taken by females to reach the minimum legal length (MLL) of 250 mm ranging from 3.6 to 17.7 years. It is proposed that, in a given restricted period, these inter-estuary variations in biological characteristics are related more to differences in factors, such as food resources and density, than to temperature and salinity. The biological characteristics of A. butcheri in the four estuaries, for which there are historical data, changed markedly between 1993-96 and 2013-15. Growth of both sexes, and also body condition in all but the normally-closed estuary, declined, with females taking between 1.7 and 2.9 times longer to attain the MLL. Irrespective of period, body condition, and growth are positively related. Age at maturity typically increased between periods, but length at maturity declined only in the estuary in which growth was greatest. The plasticity of the biological characteristics of A. butcheri, allied with confinement to its natal estuary and ability to tolerate a wide range of environmental conditions, makes this sparid and comparable species excellent subjects for assessing estuarine "health."

SUBMITTER: Cottingham A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6065278 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Growth, condition, and maturity schedules of an estuarine fish species change in estuaries following increased hypoxia due to climate change.

Cottingham Alan A Huang Peisheng P Hipsey Matthew R MR Hall Norman G NG Ashworth Eloise E Williams Joel J Potter Ian C IC

Ecology and evolution 20180625 14

Understanding challenges posed by climate change to estuaries and their faunas remains a high priority for managing these systems and their communities. Freshwater discharge into a range of estuary types in south-western Australia between 1990 and 2015 is shown to be related to rainfall. This largely accounts for decreases in discharge in this microtidal region being more pronounced on the west coast than south coast, where rainfall decline was less. Results of an oxygen-balance model imply that ...[more]

PMID: 30073071

Similar Datasets

Project description:Climate change is driving rapid changes in environmental conditions and affecting population and species' persistence across spatial and temporal scales. Integrating climate change assessments into biological resource management, such as conserving endangered species, is a substantial challenge, partly due to a mismatch between global climate forecasts and local or regional conservation planning. Here, we demonstrate how outputs of global climate change models can be downscaled to the watershed scale, and then coupled with ecophysiological metrics to assess climate change effects on organisms of conservation concern. We employed models to estimate future water temperatures (2010-2099) under several climate change scenarios within the large heterogeneous San Francisco Estuary. We then assessed the warming effects on the endangered, endemic Delta Smelt, Hypomesus transpacificus, by integrating localized projected water temperatures with thermal sensitivity metrics (tolerance, spawning and maturation windows, and sublethal stress thresholds) across life stages. Lethal temperatures occurred under several scenarios, but sublethal effects resulting from chronic stressful temperatures were more common across the estuary (median >60 days above threshold for >50% locations by the end of the century). Behavioral avoidance of such stressful temperatures would make a large portion of the potential range of Delta Smelt unavailable during the summer and fall. Since Delta Smelt are not likely to migrate to other estuaries, these changes are likely to result in substantial habitat compression. Additionally, the Delta Smelt maturation window was shortened by 18-85 days, revealing cumulative effects of stressful summer and fall temperatures with early initiation of spring spawning that may negatively impact fitness. Our findings highlight the value of integrating sublethal thresholds, life history, and in situ thermal heterogeneity into global change impact assessments. As downscaled climate models are becoming widely available, we conclude that similar assessments at management-relevant scales will improve the scientific basis for resource management decisions.

Dataset Information

Growth, condition, and maturity schedules of an estuarine fish species change in estuaries following increased hypoxia due to climate change.

Publications

Growth, condition, and maturity schedules of an estuarine fish species change in estuaries following increased hypoxia due to climate change.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets