How pollution mixed with climate change impacts fish larva skeleton growthThere's a lot of junk going into the planet's waterways, thanks to people.For fish, there is no escaping the pollution and tiny larvae are probably the most vulnerable.'Subtle early-life events may show effects much later in life and may then have a larger impact than one might think', says Quinte Geessinck from Radboud University, The Netherlands.She adds that young fish are poorly prepared to deal with toxins, which can interfere with bone growth.But pollution is not the only factor that affects bone development.As humans pump CO 2 into the atmosphere, water is absorbing the gas and becoming more acidic, 'affecting the uptake of calcium from the water, and thereby affecting formation of bones', says Geessinck.Rising temperatures also impact growth.Together, all of these factors can conspire to impact animals, but it's never clear whether these effects simply add up, reinforce each other or cancel each other out.And it's difficult to unravel the relative influences on the combined impact.Geessinck and colleagues from Radboud University set about investigating how rising temperatures interact with the impact of increased water acidity and cadmium pollution to affect the skeletal growth and swimming ability of tiny larval zebrafish.
Kathryn Knight (Sun,) studied this question.