TY - JOUR
T1 - Heat tolerance and its plasticity in Antarctic fishes
AU - Bilyk, Kevin T.
AU - DeVries, Arthur L.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Paul Cziko and Jonathan Weissman for their assistance collecting specimens and setting up the acclimation tanks, Grace Tiao for her help in determining CTMaxs, and the employees and contractors of the Raytheon Polar Services Corporation. This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs Grant NSF OPP-Ant-0231006 to A.L. DeVries and C-H.C. Cheng. Additional funding for this research came from the Department of Animal Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to K.T. Bilyk.
PY - 2011/4
Y1 - 2011/4
N2 - The adaptive radiation of the Antarctic notothenioid ancestral benthic fish stock within the chronic freezing waters of the Southern Ocean gave rise to five highly cold adapted families. Their stenothermy, first observed from several high-latitude McMurdo Sound species, has been of increasing recent interest given the threat of rising polar water temperatures from global climate change. In this study we determined the heat tolerance in a geographically diverse group of 11 Antarctic species as their critical thermal maximum (CTMax). When acclimatized to their natural freezing water temperatures, environmental CTMaxs ranged from 11.95 to 16.17 °C, well below those of fishes endemic to warmer waters. There was a significant regional split, with higher CTMaxs in species from the more northerly and thermally variable Seasonal Pack-ice Zone. When eight of the Antarctic species were warm acclimated to 4 °C all showed a significant increase over their environmental CTMaxs, with several showing plasticity comparable in magnitude to some far more eurythermal fishes. When the accrual of heat tolerance during acclimation was followed in three high-latitude McMurdo Sound species, it was found to develop slowly in two of them, which was correlated with their low metabolic rates.
AB - The adaptive radiation of the Antarctic notothenioid ancestral benthic fish stock within the chronic freezing waters of the Southern Ocean gave rise to five highly cold adapted families. Their stenothermy, first observed from several high-latitude McMurdo Sound species, has been of increasing recent interest given the threat of rising polar water temperatures from global climate change. In this study we determined the heat tolerance in a geographically diverse group of 11 Antarctic species as their critical thermal maximum (CTMax). When acclimatized to their natural freezing water temperatures, environmental CTMaxs ranged from 11.95 to 16.17 °C, well below those of fishes endemic to warmer waters. There was a significant regional split, with higher CTMaxs in species from the more northerly and thermally variable Seasonal Pack-ice Zone. When eight of the Antarctic species were warm acclimated to 4 °C all showed a significant increase over their environmental CTMaxs, with several showing plasticity comparable in magnitude to some far more eurythermal fishes. When the accrual of heat tolerance during acclimation was followed in three high-latitude McMurdo Sound species, it was found to develop slowly in two of them, which was correlated with their low metabolic rates.
KW - Antarctica
KW - Critical thermal maximum
KW - Heat tolerance
KW - Notothenioid
KW - Phenotypic plasticity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79951769583&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cbpa.2010.12.010
DO - 10.1016/j.cbpa.2010.12.010
M3 - Article
C2 - 21159323
AN - SCOPUS:79951769583
SN - 1095-6433
VL - 158
SP - 382
EP - 390
JO - Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology - A Molecular and Integrative Physiology
JF - Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology - A Molecular and Integrative Physiology
IS - 4
ER -
