Meeting Abstract
The limits of thermal tolerance depend on the effect of acute environmental changes on physiological and organismal performance. While thermal acclimation over days to weeks often allows for compensation of organismal performance traits, rapid recovery of performance over an acute timescale is not well known. This study examined the escape response fast-start in teleost fish Fundulus heteroclitus after exposure to variable temperatures over an acute time course. The escape response in twenty F. heteroclitus individuals acclimated to 20°C was recorded 3 and 60 minutes after exposure to 20°C and 12°C. Maximum angular velocity of escape responses performed at 12°C was significantly lower than at the 20°C acclimation temperature after 3 minutes. While no measures of escape response performance varied significantly among fish assayed at the 20°C acclimation temperature, maximum angular velocity significantly improved among fish assayed at 12°C after 60 minutes. These observations demonstrate that F. heteroclitus modify escape response performance over an acute timescale. For organisms that inhabit environments with fluctuating temperatures, such as F. heteroclitus, the role of such a rapid recovery may be adaptive and broadly relevant considering the link between increased thermal variability and global climate change.
