As the planet’s climate has gotten warmer, so has the prevalence of fish die-offs, or mass mortality events.
As the planet’s climate has gotten warmer, so has the prevalence of fish die-offs, or mass mortality events. These die-offs can have severe impacts on the function of ecosystems, imperil existing fish populations and reduce the global food supply. And the frequency of these events appears to be accelerating, with potentially dire consequences for the world if global carbon emissions are not substantially reduced over the 21st century.
Those are the findings of a recent paper co-authored by two members of the University of Arkansas Department of Biological Sciences: doctoral student Simon Tye and associate professor Adam Siepielski, along with several of their colleagues.
The paper, “Climate warming amplifies the frequency of fish mass mortality events across the north temperate lakes,” compiled 526 documented cases of fish die-offs that occurred across Minnesota and Wisconsin lakes between 2003 and 2013. The researchers determined there were three main drivers of these events: infectious diseases, summerkills and winterkills.
The researchers then narrowed their focus to summerkills — fish mortalities associated with warm temperatures. They found a strong relationship between local air and water temperatures and the occurrence of these events, meaning they increased in frequency as temperature increased. Moreover, their models that used either air or water temperature provided similar results, which is important because air temperature data is more widely available than water temperature data across the world.
Read more at University of Arkansas
Image: Simon Tye (Credit: University Relations)
