Ana M FariaCIIMAR - Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environment
Ana M Faria
PhD
About
59
Publications
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Introduction
I focus my research on several interconnected key areas: fish larval ecology, behavioural ecology, and the effect of anthropogenic changes, such as ocean acidification and warming, on fish behaviour and physiology. These areas are linked by a common goal: understand how behaviour, and different life history strategies and features might influence the survival of larval stages. This knowledge is critical for a better understanding of population connectivity and recruitment in a changing environment, with implications for both conservation and fisheries’ management purposes.
Additional affiliations
January 2018 - present
February 2011 - December 2017
Education
May 2006 - May 2010
Publications
Publications (59)
Acoustic communication is linked to fitness traits in many animals, but under the current scenario of global warming, sound signals can be affected by rising temperatures, particularly in ectothermic organisms such as fishes. This study examines the effect of water temperature in acoustic communication in the two-spotted goby, Pomatoschistus flaves...
Changes in water temperature may have profound effects on physiology, metabolism, and fish behaviour. However, much of the existing research is based on relatively short-term experiments. In the context of climate change, where water temperatures are increasing seasonally, and the frequency and duration of extreme heatwave events are rising, incorp...
Coastal habitats are increasingly threatened by multiple anthropogenic-related activities, which include ocean warming and loss of structural habitat complexity. These two pressures have the potential to severely affect the structure and function of marine biodiversity. Early life stages of many fish species recruit to coastal habitats at the end o...
Acoustic signals in teleost fishes play a fundamental role in reproduction. As fish are ectothermic animals, temperature has the potential to change their signal production and detection, with further implications for mating interactions. In this study, we describe the mating sounds made by the two-spotted goby, Pomatoschistus flavescens, for the f...
Temperature is a determinant cue for several behavioral, physiological, and metabolic processes in fish, which occur within a range set to optimize species fitness. Understanding how ocean warming will impact species, at individual and population levels, is, therefore, of utmost relevance for management and conservation purposes. This knowledge ass...
The growth of human populations has been driving an unprecedent and widespread increase in marine traffic, posing a real threat to marine biodiversity. Even though we are now aware of the negative effects of shipping noise exposure on fish, information about the impact on their early life stages continues to lack. Meagre (Argyrosomus regius) is a v...
Climate change is a growing threat to marine organisms and ecosystems, and it is already modifying ocean properties by, for example, increasing temperature and decreasing pH. Increasing
water temperature may also lead to an impairment of primary productivity and an overall depletion of available zooplankton. Understanding how the crossover between...
Recent literature suggests that anthropogenic stressors can disrupt ecologically relevant behaviours in fish, such as the ability to escape from predators. Disruption of these behaviours at critical life history transitions, such as the transition from the pelagic environment to the juvenile/adult habitat, may have even greater repercussions. The l...
Marine traffic is the most common and chronic source of ocean noise pollution. Despite the evidence of detrimental effects of noise exposure on fish, knowledge about the effects on the critical early life stages - embryos and larvae - is still scarce. Here, we take a natural habitat-based approach to examine potential impacts of boat noise exposure...
The ability of shoaling fish to recognise and differentiate between potential groupmates may affect their fitness and survival. Fish are capable of social recognition and multiple sensory cues mediate the recognition mechanisms. This has been comprehensively studied for juvenile and adult freshwater species. However, the recognition ability and mec...
Fish reproductive success is linked to the ability of couples to mate and produce clutches that successfully hatch. Environmental stressors like high temperature and low pH can jeopardize this energetically costly process. In this study, exposure to high temperature and low pH was tested on a marine temperate species, Gobiusculus flavescens, to eva...
Chemical cues have been widely addressed as potential cues for fish larvae to orient, detect or remain close to suitable habitat. However, most studies to date have been on tropical reef species and have suggested a chemosensory-driven homing behaviour, with only few studies on temperate fish indicating a less conclusive response to chemical cues....
The larval phase of marine teleost fishes is characterized by important morphological and physiological modifications. Many of these modifications improve the larvae’s ability to swim, which satisfies a suite of crucial biological and ecological functions. Indeed, larval fish swimming performance has been considered a good proxy for overall conditi...
Rivers are dynamic systems where flow is constantly changing, making early fish life stages with lower swimming abilities potentially vulnerable to rapid changes in water velocity. In this study, we evaluated the response of critical young life stages of three Iberian leuciscids – Achondrostoma occidentale, Iberochondrostoma lusitanicum, and Iberoc...
This poster presentation is an output of SardiTemp project (FCT and POLISBOA funding; ref. LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-032209) that results from a collaboration between several institutions. This poster presentation aims to explain the different approaches to unveil how climate change will impact marine fish, in particular small pelagic fish, using the Eu...
Fishes are currently facing novel types of anthropogenic stressors that have never experienced in their evolutionary history, such as ocean acidification. Under these stressful conditions, energetically costly processes, such as reproduction, may be sacrificed for increased chances of survival. This trade-off does not only affect the organism itsel...
Identifying nursery habitats is of paramount importance to define proper management and conservation strategies for flatfish species. Flatfish nursery studies usually report upon habitat occupation, but few attempted to quantify the importance of those habitats to larvae development. The reliance of two sympatric flatfish species larvae, the Europe...
Atmospheric CO2 levels have been increasing at an unprecedented rate due to anthropogenic activity. Consequently, ocean pCO2 is increasing and pH decreasing, affecting marine life, including fish. For many coastal marine fishes, selection of the adult habitat occurs at the end of the pelagic larval phase. Fish larvae use a range of sensory cues, in...
The file summarizes all the relevant data that have been used in the statistical analyses.
(XLSX)
The present study investigated the effect of elevated pCO2 on the development of early stages of the pelagic spawning marine fish Solea senegalensis, Diplodus sargus and Argyrosomus regius. Eggs and larvae were reared under control (pH 8.0, ∼570atm) and two elevated pCO2 conditions (pH 7.8, ∼1100atm; pH 7.6, ∼1900atm) until mouth opening (3 days po...
Recent studies have shown that the behaviour and development of coral reef fish larvae is hampered by projected future CO2 levels. However, it is uncertain to what extent this effect also occurs in temperate species. The effects that elevated pCO2 (~2000µatm) levels, which are expected to occur in coastal upwelling regions in the future, have on sh...
A simple PCR-RFLP consisting in the digestion of a fragment of the 12S ribosomal RNA (12SrRNA) with species-specific restriction enzymes (MboII and HinfI) was developed to distinguish northeastern Atlantic species in the genus Atherina. Unambiguous identification of morphologically similar sympatric species is frequently difficult, especially when...
Early life stages of many marine organisms are being challenged by climate change, but little is known about their capacity to tolerate future ocean conditions. Here we investigated a comprehensive set of biological responses of larvae of two commercially important teleost fishes, Sparus aurata (gilthead seabream) and Argyrosomus regius (meagre), a...
The Portuguese coast is located in a biogeographical transition zone between temperate and subtropical waters making it especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Several fish species struggle to cope with these annual changing conditions, particularly species that strongly depend on intertidal habitats which are expected to endure high...
Little is known regarding the swimming ability of the larvae of European plaice (Pleuronectes platessa) in relation to changes in total length (TL), dry weight (DW) and developmental stage, which is surprising given the importance of transport processes to the recruitment dynamics of this species in the North Sea and elsewhere. We investigated onto...
Swimming abilities of wild-caught sand-smelt Atherina presbyter larvae were assessed as critical swimming speed (Ucrit) throughout ontogeny. The mean Ucrit increased with size, ranging from 3·6 to 18·7 cm s−1, over the size range of 6·6–21·0 mm LT. This indicates that at hatching A. presbyter larvae, far from being passive floaters, are already cap...
The ontogeny of the swimming behaviour of sardine larvae was studied, from hatching to 75 days post-hatch (dph), by measuring the critical swimming speed (Ucrit) and observing locomotory behaviour. In addition, the effect of larval nutritional condition on Ucrit at the onset of their swimming abilities (20 to 25 dph) was evaluated by rearing larvae...
The recent revision on the taxonomic status of Lepadogaster lepadogaster resulted in the division of this species into L. lepadogaster and L. purpurea, the clarification of each species' distribution ranges and the elimination of L. zebrina (now in synonymy with L. lepadogaster). This new taxonomic status led to the need of clarifying the early dev...
Body condition in larval fishes is an important determinant of survival in the natural environment. However, few studies correlate body condition with behavioural traits critical for survival, such as swimming performance. In the present study, we compared normally fed larvae of gilthead seabream Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758, at various intervals p...
Food availability can affect larval survival directly through starvation and indirectly through the effects on larval growth rate, swimming performance and vulnerability to predators. In the present study we evaluate the effects of starvation on growth, nutritional condition and swimming behaviour of the Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis) through...
Food availability can affect larval survival directly through starvation and indirectly through the effects on larval growth rate, swimming performance and vulnerability to predators. In the present study we evaluate the effects of starvation on growth, nutritional condition and swimming behaviour of the Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis) through...
Gaining reliable estimates of how long fish early life stages can survive without feeding and how starvation rate and time until death are influenced by body size, temperature and species is critical to understanding processes controlling mortality in the sea. The present study is an across-species analysis of starvation-induced changes in biochemi...
Gobiesocids are typically reef-dwelling species whose larvae have been found in several nearshore rocky environments; this suggests a possible retention pattern for these species. Retention may occur due to the physical features of an area and/or active larval behaviour, such as swimming abilities. In the laboratory, we measured the ontogeny of swi...
Critical swimming speed (U,,it) provides a useful estimate of maximum swimming performance for fish larvae that can be used to assess transport and migratory potential. We measured U,it of red drum Sciaenops ocellatus larvae through its ontogeny and compared the swimming performance of laboratory-reared larvae to that of wild-caught individuals. U-...
The presence of sardine larval stages inside estuaries has generally been regarded as accidental and restricted to the lower part of estuaries. Sampling done with a zooplankton net in the Guadiana estuary corroborated this hypothesis. Late sardine larvae (32.8 ± 2.0 mm) were, however, unexpectedly collected with an otter trawl, 14 km upstream from...
Recruitment predictions for fish are often difficult to make due to the intrinsic variability of species and the incomplete sampling procedures. The aim of this study was to analyse the fish larval catches (abundance, diversity, size and damage) from a standard 500 μm ichthyoplankton net and different light traps (structure, size and light intensit...
Resumo: O conhecimento da história natural e das fases do ciclo de vida dos peixes ajuda-nos a conhecer e entender melhor a dinâmica ecológica da comunidade íctica. Estudos de distribuição e abundância do ictioplancton são importantes na determinação dos períodos e locais de desova. A identificação precisa desses locais tem importância fundamental...
Questions
Question (1)
Very interesting project! Have you tried to look at behavioural traits which may influence dispersal success (such as boldness, activity,...)?