Resumen de Temperature and massive fish deaths in southern South America
M. Jimena González Naya, Luciana Ramírez, Sergio E. Gómez, Roberto C. Menni
Based on a compilation of data on massive fish deaths occurred in southern South America during theTwentieth Century, we assessed the importance of climatic variables on these phenomena. We found a strong relationship(R2 =0.68) between these massive fish deaths and the mean monthly air temperature. Along the annualtemperature range there is a central range (14.6° C to 20.0° C), where the probabilities that a fish communitysuffers massive deaths is very low. Its central point (17.3° C) is very close to the mean annual value (17.2° C) ofair temperature variation. We considered this agreement as corroboration at community level of Pianka’s theoryon physiological optima. This relationship allows to monitoring the influence of climate changes, because theenvironmental variation and the zones of mortality and no mortality will change with predicted changes of themean monthly values of air temperature.
