Climate Change and Breeding Patterns of Fish

Franco Ramos

Biology 1610

Michaela Gasdik-Stofer

March 3, 2017

       Global warming and its effects on living organisms have always interested me, because, I think, global warming has most of the time devastating impacts on most living organism and it is crucial that everyone should be aware of that. The article that captured my attention was one that talks about climate change and its influence on fish. Particularly, this article talks about how warmer temperatures in waters drive three-spine stickleback fish, a kind of fish that live in northern lakes, to reproduce more often than usual. Having more abundant individuals of a species of fish does not seem like a problem, but this fact could bring to the extinction to other species of fish that compete with three-spine stickleback fish, such as sockeye salmon.

       The data that the researchers based upon have been collected for over fifty years. Originally, research was aimed to track populations of sockeye salmon for commercial purposes. The researchers caught and meticulously recorded fish in different sites on several days each year. Normally, three-spine stickleback fish spawn once a year when ice breaks and they are allowed to go to the place where they mate. By measuring the size of the fish, the researchers concluded that three-spine stickleback fish now produce more than one brood each year because ice breaks earlier each year, allowing these fish to mate earlier than usual. 

      The fact that three-spine stickleback now spawn twice a year means that there will be an overpopulation of  three-spine stickleback in a near future. Sockeye salmon, a species that competes with three-spine stickleback fin because they eat the same food and live in the same habitat, will be in danger of extinction because this fact. The extinction of sockeye salmon would impact different species of animals that feed on these fish, including humans that live in Alaska and places where sockeye salmon are common.

      Though the effects of global warming of three-spine stickleback fish are positive for this species because they can succeed better that others, other species, perhaps more important animals, are affected as a consequence. The extinction of salmon would affect residents of Alaska, because salmon is one of the principals fish they eat. Not only it would affect humans, but also animals that eat salmon too. This would trigger other extinctions as a consequence of population of a species, caused by the negligence and avarice of one animal: the human.

Source:

http://www.washington.edu/news/2017/01/18/climate-change-prompts-alaska-fish-to-change-breeding-behavior/