Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory
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The Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory (GOLT) is a biological theory that aims to explain growth patterns in fishes and other aquatic ectotherms. The theory was developed by the fishery scientist and marine biologist Daniel Pauly who formulated it first in his doctoral thesis in 1979. Since then, Pauly and others have refined and specified many of its aspects and applied it to case studies on aquaculture, oceanic fish migration and the impact climate change on fish growth.[1][2][3]
Oxygen and fish growth
The Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory postulates that oxygen uptake is a central factor in the growth of fishes and other water-breathing animals. Water contains around thirty times less oxygen than air and water-breathing critically depend on a gill surface area that is big enough to supply their bodies with O2. Fish larvae can take enough oxygen through their skin (cutaneous respiration) or their fins, fish depend on their gills after the larval stage. Gills, however, cannot grow at the same pace as the fishes' body. This allometric growth pattern intensifies through a fishes life history. At a certain point, the ratio between the gill surface area and the volume of the body prevents the fish from growing as the body can no longer be supplied with enough oxygen.[4]
The GOLT and the impact of climate change on fish migrations
The GOLT has received more scholarly and public attention since the impact of climate change on fisheries and aquaculture are more intensively discussed. Surveys in aquaculture report declining fish size, an observation that is explained by the GOLT as a response to higher temperatures. Water does not only contains less oxygen but, more importantly, the metabolism of fishes is considerably higher in warmer water. As a result, the available oxygen is invested into the maintenance metabolism and is longer available for growth, which explains the declining maximum sizes in aquacultured species.
At the same time, it is reported that many marine fish populations migrate into more temperate regions. In cooler water, they can lower their maintenance metabolism and at the same time, their environment contains more available dissolved oxygen.
References[edit]
- ↑ K.A. Meyer & D.J. Schill, The Gill‐Oxygen Limitation Theory and size at maturity/maximum size relationships for salmonid populations occupying flowing waters. Journal of Fish Biology, 98/1 (2021), 44-49.
- ↑ R. Salvatteci et al. Smaller fish species in a warm and oxygen-poor Humboldt Current system. Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 375, 101–104 (2022).
- ↑ D. Dimarchopoulou & A.C. Tsikliras, Linking growth patterns to sea temperature and oxygen levels across European sardine (Sardina pilchardus) populations. Environmental Biology of Fishes (2022)
- ↑ Daniel Pauly, The gill-oxygen limitation theory (GOLT) and its critics. Science Advances, 7/2 (2021). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abc6050
- Pauly, Daniel (2010), Gasping Fish and Panting Squids: Oxygen, Temperature and the Growth of Water-breathing Animals, International Ecology Institute.
- Pauly, Daniel (1981) "The relationships between gill surface area and growth performance in fish: a generalization of von Bertalanffy's theory of growth". Berichte der Deutschen Wissenschaftlichen Kommission für Meeresforschung, 28(4): 251–282.
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