ScienceDaily (Nov. 5,
2012) — Warmer temperatures cause greater reduction in the adult sizes of
aquatic animals than in land-dwellers in a new study by scientists from Queen
Mary, University of London and the University of Liverpool.
The research published Nov 5
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that the
body size of marine and freshwater species are affected disproportionately by
warmer temperatures. This could have implications for aquatic food webs and the
production of food by aquaculture.
The researchers compared the
extent to which the adult size of 169 terrestrial, freshwater, and marine
species responded to different non-harmful temperatures, in the largest study
of its kind.
Summarising the results,
co-author Dr Andrew Hirst from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical
Sciences, said:
"Aquatic animals shrink
10 times more than land-dwellers in species the size of large insects or small
fish. While animals in water decrease in size by 5 percent for every degree
Celsius of warming, similarly sized species on land shrink, on average, by just
half a percent."
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