Reef fish community structure across an ecological transition zone.

Transition zones exhibit a unique combination of abiotic characteristics derived from the merging of two distinct areas, hosting communities with different thermal tolerance and distribution ranges. Given these characteristics, these zones are key to unmasking the effects of climate change on biodiversity since rapid changes in the sea temperature can favor some populations more than others. This study aimed to investigate the community structure of reef fish in seven islands of the southwestern Atlantic in a transition zone.

Meta-analysis of stage-specific vertical distribution in relation to hydrography and chlorophyll in the North Atlantic.

is an important, extensively studied zooplankton species in the North Atlantic. Many studies have explored its abundance and life cycle, but basin-wide relationships between its vertical distribution and environment during the feeding season remain poorly known. We conducted a meta-analysis of stage-specific vertical distribution and its relationships with environmental variables (temperature, salinity, irradiance, chlorophyll-) in the epipelagic layer (0-200 m) of the North Atlantic during spring and summer (21 March to 21 September).

Sex Influences the Genetic Structure of Greenland Halibut in the North Atlantic.

Greenland halibut () is a commercially important species in the North Atlantic whose spatial population structure has not yet been fully determined across its entire range. We genotyped individuals from across the North Atlantic using a subset of informative single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) markers to assess their usability as a SNP panel. We assessed whether these purportedly structured SNPs had any association with sex.

Do weathered microplastics impact the planktonic community? A mesocosm approach in the Baltic Sea.

Microplastics (MPs) are ubiquitous pollutants of increasing concern in aquatic systems. However, little is still known about the impacts of weathered MPs on plankton at the community level after long-term exposure. In this study, we investigated the effects of weathered MPs on the structure and dynamics of a Baltic Sea planktonic community during ca.

Cross-basin and cross-taxa patterns of marine community tropicalization and deborealization in warming European seas.

Ocean warming and acidification, decreases in dissolved oxygen concentrations, and changes in primary production are causing an unprecedented global redistribution of marine life. The identification of underlying ecological processes underpinning marine species turnover, particularly the prevalence of increases of warm-water species or declines of cold-water species, has been recently debated in the context of ocean warming. Here, we track changes in the mean thermal affinity of marine communities across European seas by calculating the Community Temperature Index for 65 biodiversity time series collected over four decades and containing 1,817 species from different communities (zooplankton, coastal benthos, pelagic and demersal invertebrates and fish).

Cumulative Impacts of Oil Pollution, Ocean Warming, and Coastal Freshening on the Feeding of Arctic Copepods.

The Arctic is undergoing rapid changes, and biota are exposed to multiple stressors, including pollution and climate change. Still, little is known about their joint impact. Here, we investigated the cumulative impact of crude oil, warming, and freshening on the copepod species and .

A trait-based approach to assess niche overlap and functional distinctiveness between non-indigenous and native species.

Our understanding of the community assembly processes acting on non-indigenous species (NIS), as well as the relationship with native species is limited, especially in marine ecosystems. To overcome this knowledge gap we here develop a trait-based approach based on the functional distinctiveness metric to assess niche overlap between NIS and native species, using high-resolution data on benthic invertebrate communities in the Baltic Sea. Our results show that NIS retain a certain degree of similarity with native species, but display one or a few singular unique traits (e.

Disentangling tropicalization and deborealization in marine ecosystems under climate change.

As climate change accelerates, species are shifting poleward and subtropical and tropical species are colonizing temperate environments. A popular approach for characterizing such responses is the community temperature index (CTI), which tracks the mean thermal affinity of a community. Studies in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems have documented increasing CTI under global warming.

Are we ready to track climate-driven shifts in marine species across international boundaries? - A global survey of scientific bottom trawl data.

Marine biota are redistributing at a rapid pace in response to climate change and shifting seascapes. While changes in fish populations and community structure threaten the sustainability of fisheries, our capacity to adapt by tracking and projecting marine species remains a challenge due to data discontinuities in biological observations, lack of data availability, and mismatch between data and real species distributions. To assess the extent of this challenge, we review the global status and accessibility of ongoing scientific bottom trawl surveys.

Trait-based food web model reveals the underlying mechanisms of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships.

The concept of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) has been studied over the last three decades using experiments, theoretical models and more recently observational data. While theoretical models revealed that species richness is the best metric summarizing ecosystem functioning, it is clear that ecosystem function is explained by other variables besides species richness. Additionally, theoretical models rarely focus on more than one ecosystem function, limiting ecosystem functioning to biomass or production.

Marine fish traits follow fast-slow continuum across oceans.

A fundamental challenge in ecology is to understand why species are found where they are and predict where they are likely to occur in the future. Trait-based approaches may provide such understanding, because it is the traits and adaptations of species that determine which environments they can inhabit. It is therefore important to identify key traits that determine species distributions and investigate how these traits relate to the environment.

Fish communities diverge in species but converge in traits over three decades of warming.

Describing the spatial and temporal dynamics of communities is essential for understanding the impacts of global environmental change on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Trait-based approaches can provide better insight than species-based (i.e.

Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships in fish communities: biomass is related to evenness and the environment, not to species richness.

The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) is a topic of considerable interest to scientists and managers because a better understanding of its underlying mechanisms may help us mitigate the consequences of biodiversity loss on ecosystems. Our current knowledge of BEF relies heavily on theoretical and experimental studies, typically conducted on a narrow range of spatio-temporal scales, environmental conditions, and trophic levels. Hence, whether a relationship holds in the natural environment is poorly understood, especially in exploited marine ecosystems.

Catastrophic dynamics limit Atlantic cod recovery.

Collapses and regime changes are pervasive in complex systems (such as marine ecosystems) governed by multiple stressors. The demise of Atlantic cod ( Gadus morhua) stocks constitutes a text book example of the consequences of overexploiting marine living resources, yet the drivers of these nearly synchronous collapses are still debated. Moreover, it is still unclear why rebuilding of collapsed fish stocks such as cod is often slow or absent.

Four decades of functional community change reveals gradual trends and low interlinkage across trophic groups in a large marine ecosystem.

The rate at which biological diversity is altered on both land and in the sea, makes temporal community development a critical and fundamental part of understanding global change. With advancements in trait-based approaches, the focus on the impact of temporal change has shifted towards its potential effects on the functioning of the ecosystems. Our mechanistic understanding of and ability to predict community change is still impeded by the lack of knowledge in long-term functional dynamics that span several trophic levels.

A Climate-Driven Functional Inversion of Connected Marine Ecosystems.

Sustainably managing natural resources under climate change requires understanding how species distribution shifts can impact ecosystem structure and functioning. While numerous studies have documented changes in species' distributions and abundances in response to warming [1, 2], the consequences for the functional structure of ecosystems (i.e.

Correction: Community ecology in 3D: Tensor decomposition reveals spatio-temporal dynamics of large ecological communities.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

A global mismatch in the protection of multiple marine biodiversity components and ecosystem services.

The global loss of biodiversity threatens unique biota and the functioning and services of ecosystems essential for human wellbeing. To safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem services, designating protected areas is crucial; yet the extent to which the existing placement of protection is aligned to meet these conservation priorities is questionable, especially in the oceans. Here we investigate and compare global patterns of multiple biodiversity components (taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional), ecosystem services and human impacts, with the coverage of marine protected areas across a nested spatial scale.

Temporal and spatial differences between taxonomic and trait biodiversity in a large marine ecosystem: Causes and consequences.

Biodiversity is a multifaceted concept, yet most biodiversity studies have taken a taxonomic approach, implying that all species are equally important. However, species do not contribute equally to ecosystem processes and differ markedly in their responses to changing environments. This recognition has led to the exploration of other components of biodiversity, notably the diversity of ecologically important traits.

Global patterns in marine predatory fish.

Large teleost (bony) fish are a dominant group of predators in the oceans and constitute a major source of food and livelihood for humans. These species differ markedly in morphology and feeding habits across oceanic regions; large pelagic species such as tunas and billfish typically occur in the tropics, whereas demersal species of gadoids and flatfish dominate boreal and temperate regions. Despite their importance for fisheries and the structuring of marine ecosystems, the underlying factors determining the global distribution and productivity of these two groups of teleost predators are poorly known.

Climate-mediated changes in marine ecosystem regulation during El Niño.

The degree to which ecosystems are regulated through bottom-up, top-down, or direct physical processes represents a long-standing issue in ecology, with important consequences for resource management and conservation. In marine ecosystems, the role of bottom-up and top-down forcing has been shown to vary over spatio-temporal scales, often linked to highly variable and heterogeneously distributed environmental conditions. Ecosystem dynamics in the Northeast Pacific have been suggested to be predominately bottom-up regulated.

Community ecology in 3D: Tensor decomposition reveals spatio-temporal dynamics of large ecological communities.

Understanding spatio-temporal dynamics of biotic communities containing large numbers of species is crucial to guide ecosystem management and conservation efforts. However, traditional approaches usually focus on studying community dynamics either in space or in time, often failing to fully account for interlinked spatio-temporal changes. In this study, we demonstrate and promote the use of tensor decomposition for disentangling spatio-temporal community dynamics in long-term monitoring data.

The importance of benthic-pelagic coupling for marine ecosystem functioning in a changing world.

Benthic-pelagic coupling is manifested as the exchange of energy, mass, or nutrients between benthic and pelagic habitats. It plays a prominent role in aquatic ecosystems, and it is crucial to functions from nutrient cycling to energy transfer in food webs. Coastal and estuarine ecosystem structure and function are strongly affected by anthropogenic pressures; however, there are large gaps in our understanding of the responses of inorganic nutrient and organic matter fluxes between benthic habitats and the water column.

Marine ecosystem connectivity mediated by migrant-resident interactions and the concomitant cross-system flux of lipids.

Accumulating research argues that migrants influence the functioning and productivity of local habitats and ecosystems along migration routes and potentially drive cross-system energy fluxes of considerable magnitude, yet empirical documentation of local ecological effects and descriptions of the underlying mechanisms are surprisingly rare. In this study, we discovered migrant-resident interactions and substantial cross-system lipid transportation in the transition zone between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea where a resident cod population (predators) was found to interact with a herring population (prey) on a seasonal basis. We traced the lipids, using fatty acid trophic markers (FATM), from the herring feeding grounds in the North Sea to the cod livers in the Western Baltic Sea.

Resilience and stability of a pelagic marine ecosystem.

The accelerating loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services worldwide has accentuated a long-standing debate on the role of diversity in stabilizing ecological communities and has given rise to a field of research on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF). Although broad consensus has been reached regarding the positive BEF relationship, a number of important challenges remain unanswered. These primarily concern the underlying mechanisms by which diversity increases resilience and community stability, particularly the relative importance of statistical averaging and functional complementarity.