Size affects digestive responses to increasing temperature in fishes: physiological implications of being small under climate change

作者：Di Santo Valentina^*; Lobel Phillip S

来源：Marine Ecology-An Evolutionary Perspective, 2016, 37(4): 813-820.

DOI：10.1111/maec.12358

• Cleaning
• coral reefs
• Elacatinus
• global warming
• metabolism
• scaling
• specific dynamic action

Digestive metabolism is considered key to resilience of fish populations as it determines energy and nutrient availability for growth and survival. In cleaner fishes, digestion performance also influences the amount and the rate at which parasites can be removed from co-operating fishes, called hosts. Therefore, understanding the effect of temperature on digestive metabolic scope (i.e. the energy allocated to digestive processes) is crucial to predicting responses of fish communities to ocean warming. Body size can affect many physiologic processes and is thought to decrease with increasing temperature; therefore, we examined the effect of body mass and warming on digestive metabolic scopes in two sister species of cleaner gobies of the genus Elacatinus that reach different adult sizes. The dwarf-size Elacatinus lobeli increased digestive metabolic rates and scope while the larger Elacatinus oceanops decreased digestive metabolic scope with warming. Intra-specifically, larger E.lobeli also showed a decreased scope when compared to smaller individuals. Results from this study suggest that perhaps smaller fishes may have a digestive and metabolic advantage at higher temperatures and may be more resilient under warming temperatures.

• 出版日期2016-8