TITLE:
Temperature Tolerance Test Exposition with Temperate Sea Anemone Actinia equina, a Climatic and Environmental Changes Simulation
AUTHORS:
Juliana Rodrigues Gadelha, Fátima Jesus, Paula Braga Gomes, Jaime Rendón Von Osten, Fernando Morgado, Amadeu Mortágua Velho da Maia Soares
KEYWORDS:
Temperature Tolerance, Behavior, Early Warning, Climatic Changes
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.4 No.3,
March
29,
2017
ABSTRACT: Atlantic and Mediterranean
warming-related diseases outbreaks and species shifts recently have been documented.
Evaluated tools of short-term effects on the health or organisms resistance are
necessary to assess and understand mechanisms affecting marine biodiversity.
Until now, climate warming has been studied at the population or community
level. Here we offer a better understanding of such phenomena at the individual
organism level, using anatomic-morphological approaches to interpret effects of
natural physical stressors, according to behavioral patterns. The goal of this
work was to evaluate the sea anemones behavior with temperature variance. This
study takes a method of behavioral observations (morphological and anatomic
parameters, with physiological implications) to identify changes in behavior,
after exposure to the physical stressors temperature (10℃, 15℃, 20℃, 25℃ and 30℃) on temperate sea anemone Actinia
equina over 96 h of
exposure. Other endpoints as condition index and reproduction also assessed.
Behavioral patterns analysis placed the differentially ecological functions in
a wide range of categories including tentacle flexion, tentacle retraction,
column cavitation, peristome depression and oral disc flexion. These parameters
suggest that the “early stress response” (before result on individual death) to
elevated temperature involves essentially all aspects of same chemical
reactions. In this
case we observed receptors functioning and the frequency of open-close oral sea
anemones, tentacles and columns anatomic alterations to detect earlier the
effects of physical stress induction. The superiority of results tested was
that the key species reacted to different temperature ranges in order to demonstrate that species
from different climatic zones could have the same behavioral pattern but have
intrinsic adaptations on each climatic zone. Also some collections of parameters such as: 1) water nutrients
availability, 2)
reproductions rate (number of polyps), 3) survival (condition index) and 4) temperature variations
were significant on behavioral answers.