Tracking widespread climate-driven change on temperate and tropical reefs

Warming seas, marine heatwaves, and habitat degradation are increasingly widespread phenomena affecting marine biodiversity, yet our understanding of their broader impacts is largely derived from collective insights from independent localized studies. Insufficient systematic broadscale monitoring li...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Current biology Vol. 32; no. 19; pp. 4128 - 4138.e3
Main Authors:	Stuart-Smith, Rick D, Edgar, Graham J, Clausius, Ella, Oh, Elizabeth S, Barrett, Neville S, Emslie, Michael J, Bates, Amanda E, Bax, Nic, Brock, Daniel, Cooper, Antonia, Davis, Tom R, Day, Paul B, Dunic, Jillian C, Green, Andrew, Hasweera, Norfaizny, Hicks, Jamie, Holmes, Thomas H, Jones, Ben, Jordan, Alan, Knott, Nathan, Larkin, Meryl F, Ling, Scott D, Mooney, Peter, Pocklington, Jacqueline B, Seroussi, Yanir, Shaw, Ian, Shields, Derek, Smith, Margo, Soler, German A, Stuart-Smith, Jemina, Turak, Emre, Turnbull, John W, Mellin, Camille
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	England 10-10-2022
Subjects:	Animals Anthozoa - physiology Australia Biodiversity Climate Change Coral Reefs Ecosystem Fishes - physiology Australia
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Summary:	Warming seas, marine heatwaves, and habitat degradation are increasingly widespread phenomena affecting marine biodiversity, yet our understanding of their broader impacts is largely derived from collective insights from independent localized studies. Insufficient systematic broadscale monitoring limits our understanding of the true extent of these impacts and our capacity to track these at scales relevant to national policies and international agreements. Using an extensive time series of co-located reef fish community structure and habitat data spanning 12 years and the entire Australian continent, we found that reef fish community responses to changing temperatures and habitats are dynamic and widespread but regionally patchy. Shifts in composition and abundance of the fish community often occurred within 2 years of environmental or habitat change, although the relative importance of these two mechanisms of climate impact tended to differ between tropical and temperate zones. The clearest of these changes on temperate and subtropical reefs were temperature related, with responses measured by the reef fish thermal index indicating reshuffling according to the thermal affinities of species present. On low latitude coral reefs, the community generalization index indicated shifting dominance of habitat generalist fishes through time, concurrent with changing coral cover. Our results emphasize the importance of maintaining local ecological detail when scaling up datasets to inform national policies and global biodiversity targets. Scaled-up ecological monitoring is needed to discriminate among increasingly diverse drivers of large-scale biodiversity change and better connect presently disjointed systems of biodiversity observation, indicator research, and governance.
ISSN:	0960-9822 1879-0445
DOI:	10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.067