Finding Nemo fish shrink to survive
Finding Nemo fish shrink their bodies to cope with stress and survive tough times, a new study has found.
The clownfish, made famous by the 2003 Pixar film, have been found by scientists to have the rare ability to shorten their bodies in response to warming sea temperatures.
Scientists at a conservation centre in Papua New Guinea recorded the size of 134 clownfish every month for five months.
The findings showed that 100 of the studied fish shrank after a marine heatwave, and that this increased their odds of survival by 78 per cent.
It is the first time a fish that lives on coral reefs has been found to have the ability to diminish itself, but exactly how fish make themselves smaller remains unknown.
Marine iguanas also have the ability to shrink and do so through a process of skeletal reabsorption, where some of their bones are soaked back into the body.
Further research will try to determine whether the clownfish use the same approach, or something novel.
Melissa Versteeg, study author and a PhD researcher at Newcastle University, said: 'This is not just about getting skinnier under stressful conditions, these fish are actually getting shorter.
'We were so surprised to see shrinking in these fish that, to be sure, we measured each fish repeatedly over a period of five months. In the end, we discovered it was very common.'
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, also found that the odds of surviving a time of stress were higher if a clownfish shrank alongside its breeding parter.
Ms Versteeg added: 'It was a surprise to see how rapidly clownfish can adapt to a changing environment and we witnessed how flexibly they regulated their size, as individuals and as breeding pairs, in response to heat stress as a successful technique to help them survive.'
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