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Reply to: Methods matter in repeating ocean acidification studies

Nature volume 586, pages E25–E27 (2020)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 21 October 2020

replying to P. L. Munday et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2803-x (2020)

Pioneering papers by Munday and colleagues1,2 have reported profound effects of end-of-century ocean acidification—simulated by experimentally elevated CO2 levels in seawater—on the behaviour of coral reef fishes, such as extreme attraction of prey species to the chemical cues of their predators. Later studies by the same group reported that a range of other behaviours of coral reef fishes, including swimming activity, behavioural lateralization, homing and different predator avoidance behaviours, were also impaired by ocean acidification3 and that predator-escape behaviours in a coral reef mollusc were also impaired through the same physiological mechanism reported for fishes (that is, through effects on ‘GABAA-like receptors’), which led to the idea that “elevated-CO2 could cause behavioural impairment in a broad suite of marine animals”4. In 2014, we initiated experiments to further explore the physiological mechanism(s) that impaired coral reef fish behaviour in elevated levels of CO2; however, we immediately ran into a problem: despite several attempts, and many improvements to the standard methodology used in this field, we were unable to observe an effect of ocean acidification on fish behaviour. Our initial goal changed from what was meant to be a series of original experiments into a three-year effort to transparently examine behavioural effects of ocean acidification in coral reef fishes5; the findings of our study are the basis for the accompanying Comment by Munday et al.6.

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Fig. 1: Reports of attraction of coral reef fishes to predator chemical cues under elevated CO2 by Munday and colleagues have been consistent across species and time.

References

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Author information

Author notes

  1. Graham D. Raby

    Present address: Department of Biology, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia

    Timothy D. Clark

  2. Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada

    Graham D. Raby

  3. Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory, Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Dominique G. Roche

  4. Institut de Biologie, Éco-Éthologie, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Dominique G. Roche

  5. Département de Sciences Biologiques, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Sandra A. Binning

  6. Department of Biological Sciences, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

    Ben Speers-Roesch

  7. Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Fredrik Jutfelt

  8. Department of Aquatic Resources, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Drottningholm, Sweden

    Josefin Sundin

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  1. Timothy D. Clark
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All authors contributed to writing and editing the paper and Supplementary Information.

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Correspondence to Timothy D. Clark.

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Clark, T.D., Raby, G.D., Roche, D.G. et al. Reply to: Methods matter in repeating ocean acidification studies. Nature 586, E25–E27 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2804-9

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