Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
Volume 217, Issue 5, Pages 809-814Publisher
COMPANY BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/jeb.094169
Keywords
Critical temperature; Crustacean; Growth rate; Macrobrachium rosenbergii; Oxygen supply capacity; Temperature
Categories
Funding
- Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, as well as The Danish Research Council
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In aquatic environments, rising water temperatures reduce water oxygen content while increasing oxygen demand, leading several authors to propose cardiorespiratory oxygen transport capacity as the main determinant of aquatic animal fitness. It has also been argued that tropical species, compared with temperate species, live very close to their upper thermal limit and hence are vulnerable to even small elevations in temperature. Little, however, is known about physiological responses to high temperatures in tropical species. Here we report that the tropical giant freshwater shrimp (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) maintains normal growth when challenged by a temperature rise of 6 degrees C above the present day average (from 27 degrees C to 33 degrees C). Further, by measuring heart rate, gill ventilation rate, resting and maximum oxygen uptake, and hemolymph lactate, we show that oxygen transport capacity is maintained up to the critical maximum temperature around 41 degrees C. In M. rosenbergii heart rate and gill ventilation rate increases exponentially until immediately below critical temperatures and at 38 degrees C animals still retained more than 76% of aerobic scope measured at 30 degrees C, and there was no indication of anaerobic metabolism at the high temperatures. Our study shows that the oxygen transport capacity is maintained at high temperatures, and that other mechanisms, such as protein dysfunction, are responsible for the loss of ecological performance at elevated temperatures.
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