How do coral reef fish larvae support ‘athletic’ capabilities?
Needing the ability to swim at high speeds as reef fish larvae do must require a lot of energy. However, we know very little about the physiological mechanisms underpinning swimming performance of coral reef fishes…or most larval fishes. This is due to the small size of larvae, their willingness/ability to swim and quality of oxygen measuring equipment to detect small changes in water oxygen levels while larvae breathe. Creating such a swimming chamber was the first challenge of my PhD, and I’ll reveal how this was done once the paper is published 😉 Another key aspect of this research is the transition from open ocean to coral reef that reef fish larvae must make. Larvae develop away from the reef, and swim back to the reef to settle…but the microhabitats larvae inhabit become hypoxic at night due to coral respiration. So, the larvae must become hypoxia tolerant before they arrive onto the reef. Supporting rapid growth, high swimming and needing to become hypoxia tolerant is a lot of physiological multi-tasking, and there may be a genetic control to all of this…
This research is currently being written up for publication. Watch this space for updates 🙂
Skillset:
-Larval fish rearing
-Swimming respirometry (larval fishes)
-RNA extraction
-hypoxia tolerance tests
Notable papers:
Watch this space 🙂
Dr. Adam T. Downie, PhD 