Chronic exposure to environmental temperature attenuates the thermal sensitivity of salmonids

Abstract

Metabolism, the biological processing of energy and materials, scales predictably with temperature and body size. Temperature effects on metabolism are normally studied via acute exposures, which overlooks the capacity for organisms to moderate their metabolism following chronic exposure to warming. Here, we conduct respirometry assays in situ and after transplanting salmonid fish among different streams to disentangle the effects of chronic and acute thermal exposure. We find a clear temperature dependence of metabolism for the transplants, but not the in-situ assays, indicating that chronic exposure to warming can attenuate salmonid thermal sensitivity. A bioenergetic model accurately captures the presence of fish in warmer streams when accounting for chronic exposure, whereas it incorrectly predicts their local extinction with warming when incorporating the acute temperature dependence of metabolism. This highlights the need to incorporate the potential for thermal acclimation or adaptation when forecasting the consequences of global warming on ecosystems.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	González-Ferreras, A.M. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1039-6737 Barquín, J. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1897-2636 Blyth, P.S.A. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3071-9668 Hawksley, J. Kinsella, H. Lauridsen, R. Morris, O.F. Peñas, F.J. Thomas, G.E. Woodward, G. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6158-2559 Zhao, L. O’Gorman, E.J. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4507-5690
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Ecology; Ecophysiology; Limnology
Dates:	Published: 14 December 2023 Published (online): 14 December 2023 Accepted: 10 November 2023 Submitted: 15 January 2023
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) > Department of Animal and Plant Sciences (Sheffield)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	20 Dec 2023 10:00
Last Modified:	12 Jan 2024 15:44
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-023-43478-7
Related URLs:	Dataset Software or Code
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:206741