Climate change has surprising effect on endangered naked carp
User rating: 4 / 5 after 5 vote(s)
Lake Qinghai's water level has been decreasing 10–12 cm per year during the past fifty years. The naked carp that feed and grow in the increasingly saline water have adapted by drastically changing their physiology. Credit: Courtesy Chris Wood
Forthcoming in the January/February 2007 issue of
Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, a groundbreaking study reveals an unanticipated way freshwater fish may respond to water diversion and climate change. Endangered naked carp migrate annually between freshwater rivers, where they spawn, and a lake in Western China, where they feed and grow. However, Lake Qinghai is drying up and becoming increasingly more saline--leading to surprising adjustments to the carps' metabolic rate.
Full story »