Thermal biases and vulnerability to warming in the world’s marine fauna
Stuart-Smith, R.D.; Edgar, G.J.; Barrett, N.S.; Kininmonth, S.J.; Bates, A.E. (2015). Thermal biases and vulnerability to warming in the world’s marine fauna. Nature (Lond.) 528(7580): 88-92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16144
In: Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science. Nature Publishing Group: London. ISSN 0028-0836; e-ISSN 1476-4687, more
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| Keywords |
Climate Change
Environmental Managers & Monitoring
Exploitable Scientific Result
Marine Sciences > Biodiversity
Marine Sciences > Oceanography
Policy Makers / Decision Makers
Scientific Community
Scientific Publication
Marine/Coastal |
| Project | Top | Authors |
- Association of European marine biological laboratories, more
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| Authors | | Top |
- Stuart-Smith, R.D.
- Edgar, G.J.
- Barrett, N.S.
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- Kininmonth, S.J.
- Bates, A.E.
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| Abstract |
A critical assumption underlying projections of biodiversity change associated with global warming is that ecological communities comprise balanced mixes of warm-affinity and cool-affinity species which, on average, approximate local environmental temperatures. Nevertheless, here we find that most shallow water marine species occupy broad thermal distributions that are aggregated in either temperate or tropical realms. These distributional trends result in ocean-scale spatial thermal biases, where communities are dominated by species with warmer or cooler affinity than local environmental temperatures. We use community-level thermal deviations from local temperatures as a form of sensitivity to warming, and combine these with projected ocean warming data to predict warming-related loss of species from present-day communities over the next century. Large changes in local species composition appear likely, and proximity to thermal limits, as inferred from present-day species’ distributional ranges, outweighs spatial variation in warming rates in contributing to predicted rates of local species loss. |
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