July 9, 2014 — With climate change heating up British Columbia’s rivers, there are growing concerns about the vulnerability of cold-water species such as salmon.
But a new study shows salmon may have the ability to adapt to a warming world because Chinook that lay larger eggs produce offspring that have greater heat tolerance.
“What jumped out [of the data] was that the mothers with big eggs tended to have indicators the offspring were more temperature tolerant,” said Tony Farrell, who holds the Canadian Research Chair in fish physiology at the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Farrell’s lab helped Nicolas Munoz, a master’s student at the University of Western Ontario, in a research project that measured the heat tolerance of juvenile salmon by tracking their heart rates as they were exposed to increasingly warm water.
Mr. Munoz worked with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to capture spawning Chinook salmon at the Big Qualicum River on Vancouver Island.
Some 25 different “families” of offspring were produced for testing by mixing the eggs and sperm of several salmon.
Read the full story at The Globe and Mail