When
Where
Turning up the heat: effects of climate change on the fight to conserve the southwest?s rare and spectacular fishes
Speaker: Scott A. Bonar
Unit Leader and Professor, USGS Arizona
Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
Date: Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Time: 3:00-4:00 pm
Location: ENR2, S107
ABSTRACT: Fish species found in North American deserts represent some of the most unique, rare taxa in the world. Because these fishes live in aquatic ?islands?- i.e., springs, streams and rivers separated from other water bodies by vast, harsh deserts- they have evolved to cope with life on the edge in their aquatic environments. Fish in arid lands are diverse, ranging from pupfish that inhabit small drying springs 40°C and almost five times the salinity of seawater; to some of the most southern trout species in North America; to the largest minnow in North America, a fish nearly 2 m long. The species have both important ecological and economic value. A changing climate is putting these species and others that depend on the Southwest?s aquatic environments at critical risk. Here I show how the habitat of these fishes is becoming increasingly fragmented and warmer; and discuss specific research being conducted to understand their tolerance to high temperatures and changes in habitat. Furthermore, I will show how research is providing managers tools to help cope with climate change. These include critically important social techniques to educate citizenry of the importance of aquatic systems, and the effects of climate change on them. It also includes biological and physical techniques such as methods to cool streams, methods to captively propagate species to help prevent their extinction as drying waters become less habitable, and methods to reduce interactions with nonnative species in the few water bodies remaining. Protecting these genetic masterpieces from extinction in the face of climate change is a monumental, but necessary, challenge facing aquatic conservation biologists of the Southwest.
FLYER