Acidic oceans are affecting reef fish behaviour

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-12-08 11:01

Australia; QLD

Ocean acidification, which is caused by excess CO2 dissolving in the ocean and making it acidic, is having an impact on fish genetics and behaviour, according to Aussie and international researchers. The team noticed some spiny damselfish are more tolerant to high CO2 levels than others, so they bred CO2-tolerant fathers with sensitive mothers and vice versa to see how these features would be passed onto their fish kiddies. The team found that CO2-tolerant parent behaviour affected different patterns of gene expression in their fish babies’ brains, with mums affecting circadian rhythms more, while dads affected genes related to histone binding (proteins that help give structure to DNA).

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Molecular basis of parental contributions to the behavioral tolerance of elevated pCO2 in a coral reef fish

Ocean acidification, caused by the uptake of additional carbon dioxide (CO2), can affect the behaviour of marine organisms. In the spiny damselfish, some individuals are more tolerant to elevated CO2 than others, and this variation in behavioural tolerance can be inherited by their offspring. We set out to investigate how this variation is passed from parents to offspring. We discovered that tolerant parental behavior under future ocean acidification levels impacts patterns of gene expression in the brain of their offspring, but with tolerant mothers and fathers affecting different types of genes in the offspring.

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Research The Royal Society, Web page The URL will go live after the embargo lifts.

Journal/
conference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: James Cook University

Funder: The authors acknowledge the support of the Office of Competitive Research Funds OSR-2015-CRG4–2541 from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (T.R. and P.L.M.), the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (P.L.M).

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