An international study, led from the Spanish-CSIC Biological Station, has revealed that the lowest oxygen availability in warm waters due to high temperatures associated with climate change reduces the size of aquatic insects, which compromises its survival.
As reported by the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), following this situation, the risk of deterioration of aquatic ecosystems, which would result in lower fish availability due to important impacts on the trophic (food) network increases.
The global increase in temperatures influences a greater heating of maritime and continental waters, with effects such as a decrease in oxygen solubility.
That lower concentration of oxygen in the water affects fish, aquatic insects and microorganisms that need it to breathe.
“The descent in size is another aspect of the general decline of insects, associated with the growing increase in temperatures. There are not only less insects, but they could also be smaller,” said Viktor Baranov, a researcher at the Doñana Biological Station and first author of the study.
This double effect on the size and number of aquatic insects would be reducing their ability to maintain crucial ecosystems.
Temperature, oxygen and size experiment
To carry out this study, the team developed an experiment to evaluate the relations between the water temperature, the concentration of oxygen and the size of a kind of flies of the genus ‘chironomidae’ (Chironomus riparius), whose larvae are aquatic.
The size and survival of insects in six different scenarios were compared: three at a temperature of 20 degrees, with a high, medium and low oxygen concentration and three to 30, with the same three levels of oxygen concentration.
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The results were solid and bind to those obtained in another study published in 2021 in which Baranov also participated, in which they verified that the size of flies of this genre and the temperature were related.
Those commonly known as non -picing mosquitoes or mosquitoes ‘chironomids’ receive this name for their resemblance to common mosquitoes (Culicidae), but have important differences, especially the fact that they do not bite or feed on blood.
Its genome has been sequenced and is used as a model to evaluate environmental stress and the impact of pollutants on aquatic ecosystems.
In the new study, the larvae that were developed in warm waters with low oxygen concentration are 10% smaller than those that had developed in the other five scenarios.
These conditions also caused faster growth and greater mortality in insects.
Growth problems
“Since climate change is causing an increase in temperatures and oxygen is less soluble in warmer waters, the larvae of these animals are having problems growing. This is because breathing is essentially an engine of animal growth,” said the researcher.
Aquatic insects are essential for the purification of aquatic pollution and the evaluation of water quality, as well as for the proper functioning of the trophic network, since they are food of many other species.
When these insects are adults, they also exercise other functions, such as crop pollination and some of them also have recreational functions for human beings, as is the case of dragonflies with an important aesthetic and cultural component.
“Due to its outstanding role, the negative effects that climate change has on these organisms are extremely important,” said Baranov.
This study, published in the Entomology Magazine, has had the collaboration of the Academy of Sciences of Slovakia and the University of Granada.
With EFE information
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