Meeting Abstract
Aerobic scope, the difference between minimum metabolic requirements and maximum metabolic capacity, is an important metric affecting ecological success in fishes. Crude oil exposure can impair cardiorespiratory function in fishes, which reduces maximum metabolic rate and aerobic scope, and may impair ecological performance. However, oil exposure is not the only environmental stressor that can influence aerobic scope, especially in areas affected by crude oil spills. Temperature fluctuations, even within an organism’s thermal window, are also known to significantly impact overall metabolic performance, yet there has been little effort to explore how oil exposure impacts metabolic performance across temperatures. Our goal was to investigate the effects of 24h acute oil exposure on the metabolic performance of red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus, following 3wk chronic exposure to four ecologically relevant temperatures. Our results show that individuals acclimated to higher temperatures had significantly higher metabolic demands compared to individuals at lower temperatures, which resulted in significantly decreased tolerance to low oxygen conditions. As predicted, crude oil exposure resulted in significantly lower maximum metabolic rates at all temperatures except the lowest. These results suggest that acclimation to lower temperatures may mediate the insult of injury to metabolic performance following exposure to crude oil.
