Abstract
Climatic change has been implicated as the cause of abundance fluctuations in marine fish populations worldwide, but the effects on whole communities are poorly understood. We examined the effects of regional climatic change on two fish assemblages using independent datasets from inshore marine (English Channel, 1913-2002) and estuarine environments (Bristol Channel, 1981-2001). Our results show that climatic change has had dramatic effects on community composition. Each assemblage contained a subset of dominant species whose abundances were strongly linked to annual mean sea-surface temperature. Species' latitudinal ranges were not good predictors of species-level responses, however, and the same species did not show congruent trends between sites. This suggests that within a region, populations of the same species may respond differently to climatic change, possibly owing to additional local environmental determinants, interspecific ecological interactions and dispersal capacity. This will make species-level responses difficult to predict within geographically differentiated communities.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (168.4 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Chavez Francisco P., Ryan John, Lluch-Cota Salvador E., Niquen C Miguel. From anchovies to sardines and back: multidecadal change in the Pacific Ocean. Science. 2003 Jan 10;299(5604):217–221. doi: 10.1126/science.1075880. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Davis A. J., Jenkinson L. S., Lawton J. H., Shorrocks B., Wood S. Making mistakes when predicting shifts in species range in response to global warming. Nature. 1998 Feb 19;391(6669):783–786. doi: 10.1038/35842. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hunter Ewan, Metcalfe Julian D., Reynolds John D. Migration route and spawning area fidelity by North Sea plaice. Proc Biol Sci. 2003 Oct 22;270(1529):2097–2103. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2003.2473. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Knutsen H., Jorde P. E., André C., Stenseth N. Chr. Fine-scaled geographical population structuring in a highly mobile marine species: the Atlantic cod. Mol Ecol. 2003 Feb;12(2):385–394. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.2003.01750.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Magurran Anne E., Henderson Peter A. Explaining the excess of rare species in natural species abundance distributions. Nature. 2003 Apr 17;422(6933):714–716. doi: 10.1038/nature01547. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Mann Michael E. Climate reconstruction. The value of multiple proxies. Science. 2002 Aug 30;297(5586):1481–1482. doi: 10.1126/science.1074318. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- O'Brien C. M., Fox C. J., Planque B., Casey J. Climate variability and North Sea cod. Nature. 2000 Mar 9;404(6774):142–142. doi: 10.1038/35004654. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- doi: 10.1098/rspb.1998.0547. [DOI] [PMC free article] [Google Scholar]
- Stenseth Nils Chr, Mysterud Atle, Ottersen Geir, Hurrell James W., Chan Kung-Sik, Lima Mauricio. Ecological effects of climate fluctuations. Science. 2002 Aug 23;297(5585):1292–1296. doi: 10.1126/science.1071281. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Walther Gian-Reto, Post Eric, Convey Peter, Menzel Annette, Parmesan Camille, Beebee Trevor J. C., Fromentin Jean-Marc, Hoegh-Guldberg Ove, Bairlein Franz. Ecological responses to recent climate change. Nature. 2002 Mar 28;416(6879):389–395. doi: 10.1038/416389a. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
Associated Data
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.