Altered neurotransmitter function in CO2-exposed stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus): a temperate model species for ocean acidification research

DOI

Studies on the consequences of ocean acidification for the marine ecosystem have revealed behavioural changes in coral reef fishes exposed to sustained near-future CO2 levels. The changes have been linked to altered function of GABAergic neurotransmitter systems, because the behavioural alterations can be reversed rapidly by treatment with the GABAA receptor antagonist gabazine. Characterization of the molecular mechanisms involved would be greatly aided if these can be examined in a well-characterized model organism with a sequenced genome. It was recently shown that CO2-induced behavioural alterations are not confined to tropical species, but also affect the three-spined stickleback, although an involvement of the GABAA receptor was not examined. Here, we show that loss of lateralization in the stickleback can be restored rapidly and completely by gabazine treatment. This points towards a worrying universality of disturbed GABAA function after high-CO2 exposure in fishes from tropical to temperate marine habitats. Importantly, the stickleback is a model species with a sequenced and annotated genome, which greatly facilitates future studies on underlying molecular mechanisms.

In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2015) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation is 2015-09-15.

Supplement to: Lai, Floriana; Jutfelt, Fredrik; Nilsson, Göran E (2015): Altered neurotransmitter function in CO2-exposed stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus): a temperate model species for ocean acidification research. Conservation Physiology, 3(1), cov018-cov018

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.849392
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1093/conphys/cov018
Related Identifier https://cran.r-project.org/package=seacarb
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.849392
Provenance
Creator Lai, Floriana ORCID logo; Jutfelt, Fredrik ORCID logo; Nilsson, Göran E
Publisher PANGAEA
Contributor Yang, Yan
Publication Year 2015
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 2147 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (11.497 LON, 58.263 LAT)