Acidification of the oceans weakens “the sharpest weapons of nature.”
A Acidification of the oceans Due to global warming weakens the structure of sharks’ teeth, making it more easily departed, indicates a study this Wednesday in Frontiers in Marine Science.
Increased carbon dioxide (CO2, the main gas with greenhouse effect) in the atmosphere is causing global warming, which leads to ocean acidification – when decreasing pH and increased acidity caused by water that dissolves in water alter its chemical balance.
According to the study, although sharks have the ability to develop new teeth as they wear out those they have, this may not be sufficient to ensure that they escape these consequences of climate change.
“The shark teeth, despite being composed of strongly mineralized phosphates, are vulnerable to corrosion in future ocean acidification scenarios,” said the first author of the article, Maximilian Baum, a biologist at Heinrich Heine de Dusseldorf University in Germany, quoted by the Spanish news agency Efe.
“These are highly developed weapons, built for cutting meat, not to resist the acidity of the ocean. Our results show how vulnerable they can be even the sharpened weapons in nature.”
The team of that university used in experiences discarded in an aquarium of tubes-black-blackthat always swims with your mouth open to breathe.
The teeth were tested on pH levels such as the current one with a pH value that oceans are expected to reach up to 2300. After eight weeks in separate tanks, teeth exposed to the most acidic water had significantly higher damage.
“We observed visible surface damage such as cracks and holes, increased corrosion of roots and structural degradation,” said Sebastian Fraune, another author of the study.
The study analyzed only discarded teeth, so it cannot take into account the repair process that may occur in living organisms. Sharks could remineralize or replace damaged teeth faster, but according to Fraune, “the energy cost of this process would probably be higher in acidified waters.”
Even moderate pH reductions may affect more sensitive species with slow tooth replacement cycles or have cumulative effects over time, so keeping the ocean pH near the current average “can be fundamental to the physical integrity of predators tools,” Braum insisted.
He said that current investigation, showing that microscopic damage may be enough to represent a serious problem for animals that depend on their teeth to survive, recalls that “the effects of climate change propagate throughout the food chain and ecosystems.”
