EPHE PSL Research University, USR 3278 CRIOBE CNRS-UPVD, BP 1013, Moorea, 98729, French Polynesia.
MARE-Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, Lisboa, 1749-016, Portugal.
Nat Commun. 2017 Oct 10;8(1):716. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00565-w.
Organisms can behaviorally, physiologically, and morphologically adjust to environmental variation via integrative hormonal mechanisms, ultimately allowing animals to cope with environmental change. The stress response to environmental and social changes commonly promotes survival at the expense of reproduction. However, despite climate change impacts on population declines and diversity loss, few studies have attributed hormonal stress responses, or their regulatory effects, to climate change in the wild. Here, we report hormonal and fitness responses of individual wild fish to a recent large-scale sea warming event that caused widespread bleaching on coral reefs. This 14-month monitoring study shows a strong correlation between anemone bleaching (zooxanthellae loss), anemonefish stress response, and reproductive hormones that decreased fecundity by 73%. These findings suggest that hormone stress responses play a crucial role in changes to population demography following climate change and plasticity in hormonal responsiveness may be a key mechanism enabling individual acclimation to climate change.Elevated temperatures can cause anemones to bleach, with unknown effects on their associated symbiotic fish. Here, Beldade and colleagues show that climate-induced bleaching alters anemonefish hormonal stress response, resulting in decreased reproductive hormones and severely impacted reproduction.
生物体可以通过整合的激素机制在行为、生理和形态上适应环境变化，最终使动物能够应对环境变化。对环境和社会变化的应激反应通常以牺牲繁殖为代价促进生存。然而，尽管气候变化导致了种群数量减少和多样性丧失，但很少有研究将激素应激反应或其调节作用归因于野外的气候变化。在这里，我们报告了个体野生鱼类对最近大规模海洋变暖事件的激素和适应能力的反应，该事件导致珊瑚礁广泛白化。这项为期 14 个月的监测研究表明，海葵白化（共生藻损失）、海葵鱼应激反应和生殖激素之间存在很强的相关性，生殖激素使产卵量减少了 73%。这些发现表明，激素应激反应在气候变化后种群动态变化中起着至关重要的作用，而激素反应的可塑性可能是个体适应气候变化的关键机制。
高温会导致海葵白化，但其对相关共生鱼类的影响尚不清楚。在这里，Beldade 及其同事表明，气候引起的白化改变了海葵鱼的激素应激反应，导致生殖激素减少，生殖严重受损。
