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Response of chinook salmon to climate change

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 613–615 (2015)Cite this article

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To the Editor —

Muñoz et al.1 present some interesting and valuable experimental data about the physiological responses of chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) to changes in developmental temperature. Especially notable is the way they develop quantitative genetic data to evaluate the adaptive potential of cardiac performance to different temperature regimes. Pacific salmon clearly have the ability to develop population-specific adaptations in cardiac performance over evolutionary time scales2, but they found relatively little capacity for adaptive genetic or plastic responses in one key performance measure, the arrhythmic temperature, in the population they studied. However, we raise concerns about their extrapolation from a small study to broad conclusions about vulnerability of the entire species to climate change. They claim that “rising temperatures now threaten the persistence of [salmon]”1. While it is true that many individual salmon populations and some regional population groups are at risk, threats to persistence are multifaceted and population-specific3. Moreover, the premise that persistence of the genus, or any one of the Oncorhynchus species, is now threatened by rising temperature is not supported by other empirical evidence. We are also concerned that this study ignored the documented capability of salmonids to respond to environmental change with plastic and evolutionary changes in behaviour, such as upstream (adult) and downstream (juvenile) migration timing4. Changes in phenology, rather than physiological tolerances, provide greater capacity for resilience to climate change in salmonids5 and other taxa more generally6, although the two clearly interact and the relative importance of behavioural and physiological responses may vary across taxa or contexts (such as geographic locations)7.

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Figure 1: Effects of evolution on quasi-extinction risk for a modeled population of sockeye salmon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Santa Cruz, 95060, California, USA

    Nathan J. Mantua

  2. Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, 98112, Washington, USA

    Lisa G. Crozier & Robin S. Waples

  3. School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Thomas E. Reed

  4. School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195-5020, Washington, USA

    Daniel E. Schindler

Authors
  1. Nathan J. Mantua
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  2. Lisa G. Crozier
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  4. Daniel E. Schindler
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  5. Robin S. Waples
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Correspondence to Nathan J. Mantua.

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Mantua, N., Crozier, L., Reed, T. et al. Response of chinook salmon to climate change. Nature Clim Change 5, 613–615 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2670

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