Cold temperature tolerance of the alien Indo-Pacific damselfish Neopomacentrus cyanomos from the Southern Gulf of Mexico

Abstract

The abundance of the alien, Indo-Pacific damselfish Neopomacentrus cyanomos on an oil-loading platform in the southwest Gulf of Mexico indicates that widely distributed platforms could facilitate the expansion of its geographic range across the western and northern fringes of the Gulf. From there it likely will spread to other areas of the Greater Caribbean. The lionfish example demonstrates that it eventually happens, and can do so rapidly. Reduced temperature effects on the physiology of this species were examined to better predict its survivability in the northern Gulf during winter, when sea surface temperatures fall as low as 15°C along the coast. Overall, our results show that when the degree of experimental temperature decline was large and rapid, no compensation occurred and the stress response observed mostly reflected cellular processes that minimized damage. Integrated biomarker response values were significantly different between fish rapidly exposed to colder vs. warmer temperatures (declines of −4°C each day, from 26 to 14°C), reflected in higher values of blood metabolites and routine metabolic rates observed in fish exposed to 14 and 18°C respectively, and lower activity of all enzymes, lower protein carbonylation, and higher oxidative damage to lipids in fish exposed to 14°C. While the physiological proxies responded to minimize damage during the rapid-decrease experiment, the same proxies reflected the consequences of compensation when fish were thermally challenged after a 45 days acclimation at 18°C. In this case, lower values of blood metabolites and high antioxidant levels and indicators of damages underpinned its pejus lower range. Based on the results of the present work, it seems clear that low winter SSTs in the northern Gulf will slow down the colonization of the inshore area of N. cyanomos. We suggest that the use of physiological cellular stress markers on specimens acquired at the beginning of an invasion should be implemented in new standardized experimental protocols, including both rapid increases/decreases of temperature and post-acclimation temperature challenges, to assess the invasiveness potential of aquatic species such as this. in 2013, on coastal reefs near Coatzacoalcos (González-Gándara and Cruz-Francisco, 2014). Since then, the species was found on other reefs to the east and northwest of that location (de la Cruz-Francisco et al., 2015;Robertson et al., 2016), and more recently on oil platform

Long‐term mild hypoxia does not reduce thermal tolerance or performance of the freshwater prawn Macrobrachium tenellum

“…Radar plots were done using the ‘fmsb’ package (Nakazawa, 2019) in R with mean scores. IBR analyses have been employed in many eco‐physiological studies to assess thermal acclimation of fishes and invertebrates (see Marigómez et al, 2013; Ferreira et al, 2015; Madeira et al, 2016, Madeira et al, 2018; Madeira et al, 2016; Tremblay et al, 2020).…”

European Lobster Larval Development and Fitness Under a Temperature Gradient and Ocean Acidification

“…Additionally, the energetic costs of maintaining proper functioning under increased p CO 2 levels can further interrupt defense mechanisms against reactive oxygen species (ROS), leading to oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation ( Rato et al, 2017 ). Therefore, the decrease in antioxidant response and consequent lipids’ oxidative damage can serve as a proxy to identify when an organism’s defense mechanism has been compromised or suppressed by environmental stressors ( Beliaeff and Burgeot, 2002 ; Rato et al, 2017 ; Tremblay et al, 2020 ).…”