Image credit: Jeanne M, Pixabay (CC0)
The world’s oceans are home to tens of thousands of fish species, many of which live in nutrient-rich coastal waters. Different species living in a particular environment interact with each other in many ways. For example, a predatory fish may prey on some species of small fish but avoid feeding on others that help it by removing parasites from its skin. Rising ocean temperatures caused by global climate change could affect how different fish species interact with one another and, as a result, impact their communities.
One of the first steps to understanding how fish interact with each other in nature typically requires researchers to count the number of different species present and observe how they behave, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive. An alternative is to use an emerging technique in which researchers extract DNA from water, soil or air – known as environmental DNA – and analyze it to identify the species present and estimate their numbers.
Ushio et al. analyzed hundreds of samples of seawater that had been collected over a two-year period from the Boso Peninsula in Japan. Statistical methods were used to quantify how strongly fish species interact with each other and determine whether the temperature of the water influenced how different species of fish interacted over time. The findings showed that water temperature had a significant but complex effect on how strongly pairs of fish species interacted, with both positive and negative effects depending on the conditions. The impact of water temperature on the strength of the interactions varied between species, for example, Japanese anchovy and largescale blackfish interacted less strongly with other fish species in warmer water, whereas the Stripey and a species of wrasse interacted with other fish species more strongly.
The findings provide new insights into how water temperature affects the communities of fish living in coastal areas. Alongside complementing existing knowledge in the field, refining the research framework used in this work will benefit those working in fishery science by providing valuable insights into how natural and commercially important fish species respond to climate change.
