“Behavioral and physiological responses of yellow perch to moderate hypoxia” featured on The Fisheries Blog

The blog article I wrote to accompany my recently published paper, “Behavioral and physiological responses of yellow perch to moderate hypoxia,” was posted on The Fisheries Blog this week. In our study we examined how moderate concentrations of hypoxia affected yellow perch through 3 experiments:

  1. Willingness to forage in hypoxia water
  2. Physiological responses to acute exposure
  3. Physiological responses to chronic exposure

Fish may be more likely to encounter moderate hypoxia. Severe hypoxia may be lethal or force them to leave the area, but fish may utilize areas with moderate hypoxia that overlap otherwise advantageous habitat (such as areas with an abundance of preferred prey). By examining foraging behavior in hypoxia as well as the acute and chronic effects of hypoxia, we hoped to determine how fish tolerate moderate hypoxia when necessary.

Despite our expectations that yellow perch would have greater behavioral and physiological responses as hypoxia became more severe (more depleted in oxygen), yellow perch did not have significantly different responses in any of our moderate hypoxic treatments across any of our experiments. Yellow perch likely used another method that we did not measure (such as increasing their breathing rate) to cope with moderate hypoxia. However, this does indicate that yellow perch may be well equipped to tolerate moderately low hypoxia. Therefore, they may utilize areas with moderate hypoxia to take advantage of other habitat features with little negative consequences.

Read more about it in our article in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology <here> or on The Fisheries Blog <here>.