Why fish may soon lose their sense of smell
Christina Caron 26.07.2018 TOI
Just as humans rely on their sense of smell to detect suitable food and habitats, avoid danger, and find potential mates, so do fish — only instead of sniffing scent molecules floating through the air, they use their nostrils to sense chemicals suspended in water.
But fish will start losing their ability to detect different smells by the end of the century if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels keep rising, scientists warned in a recent study published in ‘Nature Climate Change’.
For fish, smell is “particularly important when visibility is not great,” said Cosima Porteus, from the University of Exeter and lead author of the study, which examined elevated carbon dioxide levels and their effects on olfactory sensitivity, gene expression and behaviour in European sea bass.
Porteus and her colleagues exposed juvenile sea bass to the amount of carbon dioxide that is predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be in seawater by 2100, which is more than double of today’s levels of carbon dioxide. When exposed to the elevated levels, the fish had to be about 42% closer to an odour source to detect it, the researchers found, making it harder for them to notice food or predators.
The fish began behaving differently as they didn’t swim as much.Although the study focused on sea bass, it is applicable to other fish, Porteus said, “because all fish use similar mechanisms to smell their surroundings.” NYT
The colourful stripes of coral reef-dwelling clownfish, made famous by the 2003 film ‘Finding Nemo’, may serve to warn predators about their poisonous anemone hosts, says a study
Christina Caron 26.07.2018 TOI
Just as humans rely on their sense of smell to detect suitable food and habitats, avoid danger, and find potential mates, so do fish — only instead of sniffing scent molecules floating through the air, they use their nostrils to sense chemicals suspended in water.
But fish will start losing their ability to detect different smells by the end of the century if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels keep rising, scientists warned in a recent study published in ‘Nature Climate Change’.
For fish, smell is “particularly important when visibility is not great,” said Cosima Porteus, from the University of Exeter and lead author of the study, which examined elevated carbon dioxide levels and their effects on olfactory sensitivity, gene expression and behaviour in European sea bass.
Porteus and her colleagues exposed juvenile sea bass to the amount of carbon dioxide that is predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be in seawater by 2100, which is more than double of today’s levels of carbon dioxide. When exposed to the elevated levels, the fish had to be about 42% closer to an odour source to detect it, the researchers found, making it harder for them to notice food or predators.
The fish began behaving differently as they didn’t swim as much.Although the study focused on sea bass, it is applicable to other fish, Porteus said, “because all fish use similar mechanisms to smell their surroundings.” NYT
The colourful stripes of coral reef-dwelling clownfish, made famous by the 2003 film ‘Finding Nemo’, may serve to warn predators about their poisonous anemone hosts, says a study
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