Climate change and deepening of the North Sea fish assemblage: A biotic indicator of warming seas

Dulvy, Nicholas K., Rogers, Stuart I., Jennings, Simon, Stelzenmüller, Vanessa, Dye, Stephen and Skjoldal, Hein R. (2008) Climate change and deepening of the North Sea fish assemblage: A biotic indicator of warming seas. Journal of Applied Ecology, 45 (4). pp. 1029-1039. ISSN 0021-8901

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Abstract

1. Climate change impacts have been observed on individual species and species subsets; however, it remains to be seen whether there are systematic, coherent assemblage-wide responses to climate change that could be used as a representative indicator of changing biological state. 2. European shelf seas are warming faster than the adjacent land masses and faster than the global average. We explore the year-by-year distributional response of North Sea bottom-dwelling (demersal) fishes to temperature change over the 25 years from 1980 to 2004. The centres of latitudinal and depth distributions of 28 fishes were estimated from species-abundance-location data collected on an annual fish monitoring survey. 3. Individual species responses were aggregated into 19 assemblages reflecting physiology (thermal preference and range), ecology (body size and abundance-occupancy patterns), biogeography (northern, southern and presence of range boundaries), and susceptibility to human impact (fishery target, bycatch and non-target species). 4. North Sea winter bottom temperature has increased by 1.6°C over 25 years, with a 1°C increase in 1988-1989 alone. During this period, the whole demersal fish assemblage deepened by ∼3.6 m decade and the deepening was coherent for most assemblages. 5. The latitudinal response to warming was heterogeneous, and reflects (i) a northward shift in the mean latitude of abundant, widespread thermal specialists, and (ii) the southward shift of relatively small, abundant southerly species with limited occupancy and a northern range boundary in the North Sea. 6. Synthesis and applications. The deepening of North Sea bottom-dwelling fishes in response to climate change is the marine analogue of the upward movement of terrestrial species to higher altitudes. The assemblage-level depth responses, and both latitudinal responses, covary with temperature and environmental variability in a manner diagnostic of a climate change impact. The deepening of the demersal fish assemblage in response to temperature could be used as a biotic indicator of the effects of climate change in the North Sea and other semi-enclosed seas.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: climate change,habitat loss,invasive species,life-history trait,north sea,regime shift,thermal preference,sdg 13 - climate action,sdg 14 - life below water ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (former - to 2017)
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Collaborative Centre for Sustainable Use of the Seas
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 11 Feb 2014 11:30
Last Modified: 06 Feb 2025 04:52
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/47506
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2008.01488.x

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