Science News.org - Clownfish Raised In Acidified Seawater Don't Display Normal Scent Response

[hatrack]

Sorry, Nemo!

Nemo might get lost again as acidifying seawater upsets the way young fish smell their way to a home, according to a new study.

A little like the animated movie-star clown fish, Nemo’s real-life counterparts go out to sea upon hatching and some 12 days later must find their way back to a reef to settle down in an anemone home. No large-personality pals with celebrity voices advise them, so real fish larvae seem to rely on scents in the water and possibly sounds from reefs when picking a locale.

In new lab experiments, though, orange clown fish larvae didn’t respond normally to scent when researchers reared them in seawater pushed closer to the acidic side of the scale, says Philip Munday of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Ocean chemists predict that the current increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from human activity is lowering the pH.

In conditions projected for the end of the century, clown fish larvae might have trouble picking out scents in the water and finding the right habitats, he and his colleagues report online February 2 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

EDIT

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40508/title/Nemo_could_get_lost_in_acidifying_seawater

[thereismore]

1. That's why they are called clownfish. Useless fish we can live without.

:sarcasm: