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Phenotypic plasticity manifested after acclimatization is a very important source of biological variability among fish species. We hypothesized that hypoxic acclimation, besides potentially generating a temporary hypoxic respiratory phenotype, would also manifest as a continued benefit after reacclimation to normoxia. Hence, we holistically characterized the respiratory phenotype of European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758)) acclimated to normoxia with or without prior acclimation to hypoxia. Compared with the original normoxic phenotype, prior acclimation to hypoxia and return to normoxia produced a 27% higher absolute aerobic scope (AAS), a 24% higher citrate synthase activity in red muscle, and a 28% lower excess post exercise O2 consumption. Additional testing of hypoxia-acclimated fish under normoxia explored the specific effects of hypoxic acclimation. The hypoxic phenotype, when compared with the original normoxic phenotype, had a lower standard metabolic rate, a better hypoxia performance, and a lower minimum PO2 for supporting 50% AAS. Thus, respiratory plasticity allows sea bass to improve its maximum aerobic capacity after returning to normoxia from hypoxic acclimation, a potential benefit from exploiting a hypoxic habitat. Given this respiratory malleability, general predictions for marine fish exploiting a more hypoxic future should better consider respiratory plasticity and prolonged effects of hypoxic exposures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thermal acclimation, a compensatory physiological response, is central to species survival especially during the current era of global warming. By providing the most comprehensive assessment to date for the cardiorespiratory phenotype of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) at six acclimation temperatures from 15°C to 25°C, we tested the hypothesis that, compared with other strains of rainbow trout, an Australian H-strain of rainbow trout has been selectively inbred to have an unusually high and broad thermal acclimation potential. Using a field setting at the breeding hatchery in Western Australia, thermal performance curves were generated for a warm-adapted H-strain by measuring growth, feed conversion efficiency, specific dynamic action, whole-animal oxygen uptake (Ṁ O2) during normoxia and hypoxia, the critical maximum temperature and the electrocardiographic response to acute warming. Appreciable growth and aerobic capacity were possible up to 23°C. However, growth fell off drastically at 25°C in concert with increases in the time required to digest a meal, its total oxygen cost and its peak Ṁ O2. The upper thermal tipping points for appetite and food conversion efficiency corresponded with a decrease in the ability to increase heart rate during warming and an increase in the cost to digest a meal. Also, comparison of upper thermal tipping points provides compelling evidence that limitations to increasing heart rate during acute warming occurred well below the critical thermal maximum (CTmax) and that the faltering ability of the heart to deliver oxygen at different acclimation temperatures is not reliably predicted by CTmax for the H-strain of rainbow trout. We, therefore, reasoned the remarkably high thermal acclimation potential revealed here for the Australian H-strain of rainbow trout reflected the existing genetic variation within the founder Californian population, which was then subjected to selective inbreeding in association with severe heat challenges. This is an encouraging discovery for those with conservation concerns for rainbow trout and other fish species. Indeed, those trying to predict the impact of global warming should more fully consider the possibility that the standing intra-specific genetic variation within a fish species could provide a high thermal acclimation potential, similar to that shown here for rainbow trout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested the hypothesis that the chronic residual effects of an acute exposure of European sea bass ( Dicentrarchus labrax ) to chemically dispersed crude oil is manifest in indices of hypoxic performance rather than aerobic performance. Sea bass were pre-screened with a hypoxia challenge test to establish their incipient lethal oxygen saturation (ILOS), but on discovering a wide breadth for individual ILOS values (2.6–11.0% O 2 saturation), fish were subsequently subdivided into either hypoxia sensitive (HS) or hypoxia tolerant (HT) phenotypes, traits that were shown to be experimentally repeatable. The HT phenotype had a lower ILOS and critical oxygen saturation (O 2crit ) compared with the HS phenotype and switched to glycolytic metabolism at a lower dissolved oxygen, even though both phenotypes accumulated lactate and glucose to the same plasma concentrations at ILOS. As initially hypothesized, and regardless of the phenotype considered, we found no residual effect of oil on any of the indices of aerobic performance. Contrary to our hypothesis, however, oil exposure had no residual effect on any of the indices of hypoxic performance in the HS phenotype. In the HT phenotype, on the other hand, oil exposure had residual effects as illustrated by the impaired repeatability of hypoxia tolerance and also by the 24% increase in O 2crit , the 40% increase in scope for oxygen deficit, the 17% increase in factorial scope for oxygen deficit and the 57% increase in accumulated oxygen deficit. Thus, sea bass with a HT phenotype remained chronically impaired for a minimum of 167 days following an acute 24-h oil exposure while the HS phenotypes did not. We reasoned that impaired oxygen extraction at gill due to oil exposure activates glycolytic metabolism at a higher dissolved oxygen, conferring on the HT phenotype an inferior hypoxia resistance that might eventually compromise their ability to survive hypoxic episodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The utility of measuring whole-animal performance to frame the metabolic response to environmental hypoxia is well established. Progressively reducing ambient oxygen (O2) will initially limit maximum metabolic rate as a result of a hypoxemic state and ultimately lead to a time-limited, tolerance state supported by substrate-level phosphorylation when the O2 supply can no longer meet basic needs (standard metabolic rate, SMR). The metabolic consequences of declining ambient O2 were conceptually framed for fishes initially by Fry's hypoxic performance curve, which characterizes the hypoxemic state and its consequences to absolute aerobic scope (AAS), and Hochachka's concept of scope for hypoxic survival, which characterizes time-limited life when SMR cannot be supported by O2 supply. Yet, despite these two conceptual frameworks, the toolbox to assess whole-animal metabolic performance remains rather limited. Here, we briefly review the ongoing debate concerning the need to standardize the most commonly used assessments of respiratory performance in hypoxic fishes, namely critical O2 (the ambient O2 level below which maintenance metabolism cannot be sustained) and the incipient lethal O2 (the ambient O2 level at which a fish loses the ability to maintain upright equilibrium), and then we advance the idea that the most useful addition to the toolbox will be the limiting-O2 concentration (LOC) performance curve. Using Fry & Hart's (1948) hypoxia performance curve concept, an LOC curve was subsequently developed as an eco-physiological framework by Neil et al. and derived for a group of fish during a progressive hypoxia trial by Claireaux and Lagardère (1999). In the present review, we show how only minor modifications to available respirometry tools and techniques are needed to generate an LOC curve for individual fish. This individual approach to the LOC curve determination then increases its statistical robustness and importantly opens up the possibility of examining individual variability. Moreover, if peak aerobic performance at a given ambient O2 level of each individual is expressed as a percentage of its AAS, the water dissolved O2 that supports 50% of the individual's AAS (DOAAS-50) can be interpolated much like the P50 for an O2 hemoglobin dissociation curve (when hemoglobin is 50% saturated with O2). Thus, critical O2, incipient lethal O2, DOAAS-50 and P50 and can be directly compared within and across species. While an LOC curve for individual fish represents a start to an ongoing need to seamlessly integrate aerobic to anaerobic capacity assessments in a single, multiplexed respirometry trial, we close with a comparative exploration of some of the known whole-organism anaerobic and aerobic capacity traits to examine for correlations among them and guide the next steps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]