ABOVE: WIKIMEDIA, PAUL ASMAN AND JILL LENOBLE
Update (August 9, 2022): Science has retracted a 2014 paper that reported a strong connection between chemical cues and coral reef fish behavior after the University of Delaware informed the journal that some figures had been questioned and that the institution “no longer [has] confidence in the validity of the data,” Retraction Watch reports. Danielle Dixson, the paper’s first author, previously told the outlet that she “categorically” denies the allegations.
New experimental results refute a decade of research suggesting that increased ocean acidification—the process by which increasingly available atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean, lowering its pH—alters the behavior of coral reef fish, researchers reported today in Nature. The researchers saw no significant difference in the animals’ behavior in several different laboratory-based tests in water with varying pH.
Many studies published over the last 10 years reported that when the pH ...
