How does temperature affect agriculture?

How does temperature affect the metabolic activity of a fish?

• Hi, I'm a freshman in a honors bio class. I conducted a lab, where our question was how does the temperature affect the metabolic activity of a fish? I'm very confused about how the temperature could affect the metabolic activity of a fish. I was sure that the fish would thrive postivitly in cold water since there is more oxygen and the fish would struggle in hot water, since there is less oxgen and the room temp would have no adverse affect on the metabolism of the fish, since the temp is average. We measured the metabolic activity with gill beats per min.However, when I conducted the experiment, our results was the opposite. The average of gill beats per min for the cold water was the lowest, the average of the gill beats per min for hot water was the highest, and the average of gill beats per min for the room temp water was in the middle. I don't know the scientific explaination behind this. What is the scientific explaination for how does temperature affect the metabolic activity of a fish and why?

• Answer:

  You may want to take into consideration what kind of fish you used and their natural water temperature. The lower the temperature, the more oxygen there is in the water and the fewer times per minute the fish will need to beat its gills to breathe. In warmer water with less oxygen in the water, the fish will need to breathe more, thus more gill beats. It's similar to the concept of you breathing faster when you've been running (hot water equivalent) as opposed to sleeping (cold water).