Meeting Abstract
Global climate change is altering the environment of aquatic species in a variety of ways that strongly influence the physiology of these species. Physiological studies are crucial to predicting how species will respond. Most physiological studies focus solely on one stressor. However, to best understand how an organism will respond to external perturbation, multiple stressors and their interactions must be studied. In order to discover the interactive effect of salinity and cold temperature Nile tilapia will be subjected to a variety of stress treatments. Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) provide an ideal model to study the combined effect of temperature and salinity as it inhabits freshwater systems that are vulnerable to sea level rise, and because of the large amount of genetic information available for this species. The biogeography of tilapia may change as sea level rises rendering their current niche uninhabitable. To predict whether tilapia and other freshwater species will exhibit a shift in distribution, we need to better understand how the severity of salinity and temperature stress, separately and in combination, will affect such species. Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) were subjected to a 1 hr stress treatment where salinity and temperature were manipulated. Treatments were either 22°c or 14°c, and varied salinities of 0ppt, 16ppt, or 34ppt. All fish survived the treatments. Tissues were then collected, and assayed using flow cytometry and ELISA’s for PCNA and p53.
