The effects of acclimation temperature, salinity, and behavior on the thermal tolerance of Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus)

Mozambique tilapia have been shown to be incredibly stress tolerant with respect to environmental salinity, hypoxia, and ammonia concentrations. Temperature challenges to this species have shown that they have difficulty with cold acclimation. The purpose of this study was to measure the effects of acclimation temperature and salinity on the thermal tolerance of Mozambique tilapia as assessed by critical thermal maxima (CTMax) and critical thermal minima (CTMin). We also monitored fish behavior and quantified ventilation rate. To our knowledge, this study was the first to investigate upper and lower thermal tolerances, and the effect of environmental salinity in this physiologically impressive species. Using predictive regression analyses of the thermal limits, thermal tolerance polygons were constructed and total areas were calculated 678.9 degrees C-2 for freshwater (FW)-acclimated tilapia, and 739.4 degrees C-2 seawater (SW)-acclimated tilapia. During the thermal challenges, we observed two novel behaviors in response to thermal challenge, ventilation cessation behavior (VCB) and aquatic surface respiration (ASR), and we conclude that the use of these behaviors extended the thermal limits of these fish in both FW and two-thirds SW by limiting the exposure of the gill epithelium to the changing environment.