Pacific chinook salmon stand a good chance of adapting to higher temperatures in a scenario with modest warming, but could be wiped out under projections of maximum warming.
Bryan Neff at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and his colleagues exposed the offspring of wild-caught chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha; pictured) to present-day temperatures and to those that are a few degrees higher, and measured the animals' maximum heart rate. They found that the fish adapted their cardiac capacity, and were still able to reach maximum heart rate at temperatures 2 °C warmer than today's. However, under conditions 4.4 °C warmer than the present day, the salmon began to experience heart failure.
The authors predict that by the year 2100, chinook salmon populations will face a 17% chance of catastrophic loss under moderate warming, but a 98% chance of such loss if warming reaches a maximum.
Nature Clim. Change http://doi.org/xws (2014)
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Salmon adapt to warmer waters. Nature 517, 124 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/517124a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/517124a
