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Ocean acidification does not impair the behaviour of coral reef fishes.
Journal article

Ocean acidification does not impair the behaviour of coral reef fishes.

  • Clark TD School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia. t.clark@deakin.edu.au.
  • Raby GD Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
  • Roche DG Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
  • Binning SA Institut de Biologie, Éco-Éthologie, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
  • Speers-Roesch B Department of Biological Sciences, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.
  • Jutfelt F Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
  • Sundin J Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. josefin@teamsundin.se.
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  • 2020-01-10
Published in:
  • Nature. - 2020
Animals
Behavior, Animal
Carbon Dioxide
Coral Reefs
Fishes
Hydrogen-Ion Concentration
Oceans and Seas
English The partial pressure of CO2 in the oceans has increased rapidly over the past century, driving ocean acidification and raising concern for the stability of marine ecosystems1-3. Coral reef fishes are predicted to be especially susceptible to end-of-century ocean acidification on the basis of several high-profile papers4,5 that have reported profound behavioural and sensory impairments-for example, complete attraction to the chemical cues of predators under conditions of ocean acidification. Here, we comprehensively and transparently show that-in contrast to previous studies-end-of-century ocean acidification levels have negligible effects on important behaviours of coral reef fishes, such as the avoidance of chemical cues from predators, fish activity levels and behavioural lateralization (left-right turning preference). Using data simulations, we additionally show that the large effect sizes and small within-group variances that have been reported in several previous studies are highly improbable. Together, our findings indicate that the reported effects of ocean acidification on the behaviour of coral reef fishes are not reproducible, suggesting that behavioural perturbations will not be a major consequence for coral reef fishes in high CO2 oceans.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/186482
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