Operating from the National Institute for Amazonian Studies in Manaus, Adalberto Luis Val investigates how rising water temperatures deplete dissolved oxygen and increase carbon dioxide levels. To measure these vulnerabilities, researchers utilize customized experimental chambers that simulate projected 2100 climate conditions alongside current river conditions. The tambaqui serves as a key indicator of equatorial ecosystem distress because its survival depends on a specialized lower lip adapted to skim oxygen from the water's surface.
Key points
Freshwater tambaqui provide early biological warnings of broader ecological breakdown acr…: Freshwater tambaqui provide early biological warnings of broader ecological breakdown across the warming Amazon basin.
Tropical aquatic species face far greater dangers from shifting water chemistry than thei…: Tropical aquatic species face far greater dangers from shifting water chemistry than their counterparts in temperate zones.
Rainforest aquatic life confronts compounding perils from escalating global heating along…: Rainforest aquatic life confronts compounding perils from escalating global heating alongside wildcat mining, deforestation, and agricultural runoff.
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As a boy in rural São Paulo, Adalberto Luis Val used to stare into the lake where his father took him fishing and wonder how all those creatures swimming below stayed alive. One day, he netted a few, put them in a jar, and brought them home to observe. The next morning, they were all dead. Val was devastated but intrigued.
“I needed to know how fish are able to live,” he says.
Fast forward to present-day Manaus, a city in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and Val’s adoptive home since the early 1980s, which he has helped convert over the past five decades into a frontier for tropical climate science.
An award-winning ecophysiologist, Val, now 70, learned about gills, gases and the biochemical mysteries of how fish survive by pulling oxygen from water – and perish when the climate goes rogue. That is how the tambaqui caught his eye.
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