Water temperature explains part of the variation in basal plasma cortisol level within and between fish species
Camille Houdelet
MARBEC, Universite Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Montpellier, France
Search for more papers by this authorEduardo Bessa
Graduate Program in Ecology, Life and Earth Sciences, University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Benjamin Geffroy
MARBEC, Universite Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Montpellier, France
Correspondence
Benjamin Geffroy, MARBEC, Universite Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, 34250 Palavas-Les-Flots, France.
Email: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorBastien Sadoul
DECOD, Ecosystem Dynamics and Sustainability, Institut Agro, Ifremer, INRAE, Rennes, France
Search for more papers by this authorCamille Houdelet
MARBEC, Universite Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Montpellier, France
Search for more papers by this authorEduardo Bessa
Graduate Program in Ecology, Life and Earth Sciences, University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Benjamin Geffroy
MARBEC, Universite Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Montpellier, France
Correspondence
Benjamin Geffroy, MARBEC, Universite Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, 34250 Palavas-Les-Flots, France.
Email: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorBastien Sadoul
DECOD, Ecosystem Dynamics and Sustainability, Institut Agro, Ifremer, INRAE, Rennes, France
Search for more papers by this authorBenjamin Geffroy, Bastien Sadoul Co-last Authors.
Abstract
Within the thermal tolerance range of fish, metabolism is known to escalate with warming. Rapid thermic changes also trigger a series of physiological responses, including activation of the stress axis, producing cortisol. Fish have adapted to their environment by producing a low level of plasmatic cortisol when unstressed (basal), so that thriving in their natural temperature should not impact their basal cortisol levels. Yet, surprisingly, little is known on how temperature affects cortisol within and between fish species. Here, we conducted a phylogenetic meta-analysis to (1) test whether temperature can explain the differences in basal cortisol between species and (2) evaluate the role of temperature on differences in cortisol levels between individuals of a same species. To do this, we retrieved basal plasma cortisol data from 126 studies, investigating 33 marine and freshwater fish species, and correlated it to water temperature. Intra-species variability in basal plasma cortisol levels was further investigated in two species: the European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax and the Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus. Factors such as life stage, sex and weight were also considered in the analyses. Overall, our phylogenetic analysis revealed a clear positive correlation between basal cortisol level and the temperature at which the fish live. The role of temperature has also been confirmed within D. labrax, while it failed to be significant in O. niloticus. In this paper, the influence of habitat, life stage, sex and weight on basal plasma cortisol levels is also discussed. Since some abiotic parameters were not included in the analysis, our study is a call to encourage scientists to systematically report other key factors such as dissolved oxygen or salinity to fully depict the temperature-cortisol relationship in fishes.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
All the data that support the findings are available in the supplementary material.
Supporting Information
| Filename | Description |
|---|---|
| jfb15342-sup-0001-Figure S1.tiffTIFF image, 14.8 MB | SUPPORTING INFORMATION FIGURE S1. Phylogenetic tree of the 33 fish species used in the phylogenetic meta-analysis computed using the R package rotl. All data and R code supporting the figure are available in Supporting Information Data S1 |
| jfb15342-sup-0002-Data S1.RARapplication/RAR, 28.1 MB | SUPPORTING INFORMATION DATA S1. All data for the meta-analysis as well as the R code to run the different models (ZIP) |
| jfb15342-sup-0003-supinfo.pptxPowerPoint 2007 presentation , 42.3 KB | SUPPORTING INFORMATION APPENDIX S1. PRISMA flow diagram describing literature search, selection and analyses. The orange rectangles narrow the numbers of studies per dataset prior to the analysis steps (purple rectangles) performed on the basal cortisol level within each study. Numbers are provided per dataset: red for ‘all fishes’, blue for ‘only sea bass’ and green for ‘only Nile tilapia’. PRISMA, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (TIF) |
| jfb15342-sup-0004-Table S1.xlsxExcel 2007 spreadsheet , 11.5 KB | SUPPORTING INFORMATION TABLE S1. Comparison of the models including final fixed factors selected (temperature, habitat, life stage and sex for ‘all fishes’, and temperature and weight for both ‘only sea bass’ and ‘only Nile tilapia’). These models were compared based on their DIC using the MuMIn package (Barton, 2019), which also provides the weight of each model. DIC, deviance information criterion (XLSX) |
| jfb15342-sup-0005-Table S2.xlsxExcel 2007 spreadsheet , 14.5 KB | SUPPORTING INFORMATION TABLE S2. Number of values (n), basal cortisol level (ng/ml, mean ± s.e.) and temperature (°C, mean ± s.e.) of the 33 species investigated in the meta-analyses (XLSX) |
| jfb15342-sup-0006-Table S3.xlsxExcel 2007 spreadsheet , 11.7 KB | SUPPORTING INFORMATION Table S3. Estimates of heterogeneity I2 (%) from the normalized-mean meta-analysis and the CV meta-analysis for the best model with all random factors for the three different datasets ‘All fishes’, ‘European sea bass’ and ‘Nile tilapia’. The MLPMA allowed partitioning I2 among varying levels. Posterior mean and upper and lower 95% CIs for each estimate of I2 are provided. H2 is phylogenetic heritability, the proportion of variability in the data attributable to the phylogenetic component of MLPMA calculated following Nakagawa and Santos (2012). CI, credible interval; CV, coefficient of variation; MLPMA, multilevel phylogenetic meta-analysis (XLSX) |
| jfb15342-sup-0007-Text S1.docxWord 2007 document , 15.6 KB | SUPPORTING INFORMATION TEXT S1. List of the 161 species used in the study |
Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
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