Editorial: Homeostasis and physiological regulation in the aquatic animal during osmotic stress
Xingkun Jin, Xiaodan Wang, William Ka Fai Tse, Yan Shi
Abstract
An aquatic animal (either vertebrate or invertebrate) comes into intimate biological interactions with surrounding water media for most or all of its lifetime. Salinity is a pivotal environmental factor influencing the survival, growth and reproduction of aquatic animal. Often, the intensity, duration and frequency of this modulation work synergistically with temperature. This raises concerns about how and to what extent the osmotic stress that anthropogenic global warming will induce and bring impact on the aquatic animals. To cope with such stress, the aquatic animals had evolved various osmoregulatory and/or osmoconforming strategies that actively balance the absorption and secretion of water and/or ions to maintain osmotic homeostasis. Therefore, an effective osmoregulatory capacity favours euryhaline aquatic animal through habitat expansion and adaptive radiation in a climate change scenario. Systematic research focusing on how such intricate mechanisms evolve and function will not only contribute to the in-depth understanding of the physiology of osmoregulation, it also is of great significance for the practical optimization of selective breeding programs and environmental management in aquaculture of fish and aquatic invertebrates, and for the conservation of global fisheries.