Swimming performance of sharks and rays under climate change

Abstract

Climate change stressors (e.g., warming and ocean acidification) are an imminent challenge to the physiological performance of marine organisms. Several studies spanning the last decade have reported widespread effects of warming and acidification on marine fishes, especially teleosts, but more work is needed to elucidate the responses in marine elasmobranchs, i.e., sharks and rays. Dispersal capacity, as a result of locomotor performance, is a crucial trait that will determine which group of elasmobranchs will be more or less vulnerable to changes in the environment. In fact, efficient and high locomotor performance may determine the capacity for elasmobranchs to relocate to a more favorable area. In this review we integrate findings from work on locomotion of marine sharks and rays to identify characteristics that outline potential vulnerabilities and strength of sharks and rays under climate change. Traits such as intraspecific variability in response to climatic stressors, wide geographic range, thermotaxis, fast swimming or low energetic costs of locomotion are likely to enhance the capacity to disperse. Future studies may focus on understanding the interacting effect of climatic stressors on morphology, biomechanics and energetics of steady and unsteady swimming, across ontogeny and species.

EcoPhysioMechanics: Integrating Energetics and Biomechanics to Understand Fish Locomotion under Climate Change

“…Fishes display an extraordinary variety of body shapes and locomotor behaviors that they use to escape predators, attack prey, maneuver in complex habitats, perform large scale migrations, school, mate, communicate, and explore the substrate ( Johnson and Bennett 1995 ; Wilga and Lauder 2002 ; Shubin et al 2006 ; Clark 2016 ; Fox et al 2018 ; Jung et al 2018 ; Flowers et al 2020 ). However, the dearth of integrative studies examining the energetic consequences and the limits of locomotor performance slows down our capacity to understand and forecast shifts in movement range and capacity, especially under environmental change ( Helmuth et al 2005 ; Vilmar and Di Santo 2022 ).…”

“…Progress towards this framework requires that more studies combine measurements of morphology, kinematics, and energetics of fish swimming under different abiotic conditions, in the lab as well as in the wild ( Long Jr et al 2010 ; Lauder and Di Santo 2015 ; Porter et al 2020 ; Lauer et al 2022 ). This approach will favor the identification of physiotypes and morphotypes that might be vulnerable or resilient to rapid changes in the environment ( Somero 2010 ; Byrne and Przeslawski 2013 ; Couturier et al 2013 ; Vilmar and Di Santo 2022 ).…”

“…Over the past decades physiologists have suggested that investigating shifts in locomotor performance can be used to elucidate major mechanisms of organismal responses to climate change ( Somero 2010 ; Lauder and Di Santo 2015 ; Lawson et al 2019 ; Vilmar and Di Santo 2022 ). While linking climate data and ecophysiology has resulted in the establishment of the prolific field of “conservation physiology” ( Wikelski and Cooke 2006 ; Cooke et al 2013 ), biomechanics has yet to become integrated in many physiological studies, and it is rarely applied to work looking at locomotor performance under climate change scenarios ( Helmuth et al 2005 ; Denny and Helmuth 2009 ; Denny and Gaylord 2010 ; Carrington et al 2015 ; Currier et al 2021 ; Vilmar and Di Santo 2022 ).…”

“…Over the past decades physiologists have suggested that investigating shifts in locomotor performance can be used to elucidate major mechanisms of organismal responses to climate change ( Somero 2010 ; Lauder and Di Santo 2015 ; Lawson et al 2019 ; Vilmar and Di Santo 2022 ). While linking climate data and ecophysiology has resulted in the establishment of the prolific field of “conservation physiology” ( Wikelski and Cooke 2006 ; Cooke et al 2013 ), biomechanics has yet to become integrated in many physiological studies, and it is rarely applied to work looking at locomotor performance under climate change scenarios ( Helmuth et al 2005 ; Denny and Helmuth 2009 ; Denny and Gaylord 2010 ; Carrington et al 2015 ; Currier et al 2021 ; Vilmar and Di Santo 2022 ). Successful integration has been slow mostly because physiologists and biomechanists generally focus on different aspects of locomotor performance ( Breder 1926 ; Fry 1947 ; Johnson and Bennett 1995 ; Di Santo et al 2021 ), and there is a lack of unifying frameworks to study mechanics and energetics of movement under a new interdisciplinary umbrella of “ EcoPhysioMechanics .” Ecological physiologists typically quantify the effect of abiotic factors on performance such as, for example, oxygen consumption during locomotion or digestion ( Fry 1947 ; Brett 1967 ; Roche et al 2013 ; Bale et al 2014 ; Deutsch et al 2015 ), while biomechanists focus on the relationship between form and function to understand how organisms move under different physical conditions ( Breder 1926 ; Lindsey 1978 ; Shadwick and Lauder 2006 ; Lauder 2015 ; Di Santo et al 2021 ).…”

The upper thermal limit of epaulette sharks (Hemiscyllium ocellatum) is conserved across three life history stages, sex and body size

“…Furthermore, many elasmobranch species are demersal and exhibit a degree of site fidelity (e.g. Awruch et al, 2012 ; Kneebone et al, 2020 ), potentially limiting their ability to undertake large-scale migrations to relocate to cooler, more suitable thermal conditions that also provide adequate benthic habitat ( Vilmar and Di Santo, 2022 ). So, despite mounting global concerns for elasmobranch populations, and that their life history strategies may preclude their ability to quickly adapt to changing environments, the thermal biology of most elasmobranch species remains under-investigated ( Pereira Santos et al, 2021 ).…”