Rapid biotic homogenization of marine fish assemblages
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Date
24/09/2015Funder
Grant ID
250189
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Abstract
The role human activities play in reshaping biodiversity is increasingly apparent in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the responses of entire marine assemblages are not well-understood, in part, because few monitoring programs incorporate both spatial and temporal replication. Here, we analyse an exceptionally comprehensive 29-year time series of North Atlantic groundfish assemblages monitored over 5° latitude to the west of Scotland. These fish assemblages show no systematic change in species richness through time, but steady change in species composition, leading to an increase in spatial homogenization: the species identity of colder northern localities increasingly resembles that of warmer southern localities. This biotic homogenization mirrors the spatial pattern of unevenly rising ocean temperatures over the same time period suggesting that climate change is primarily responsible for the spatial homogenization we observe. In this and other ecosystems, apparent constancy in species richness may mask major changes in species composition driven by anthropogenic change.
Citation
Magurran , A , Dornelas , M , Moyes , F H , Gotelli , N J & McGill , B 2015 , ' Rapid biotic homogenization of marine fish assemblages ' , Nature Communications , vol. 6 , 8405 . https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9405
Publication
Nature Communications
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2041-1723Type
Journal article
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Description
We acknowledge support from ERC advanced grant BioTIME (250189). A.E.M. also thanks the Royal Society. M.D. is grateful for support from the Scottish Funding Council (MASTS-grant reference HR09011). N.J.G. is supported by U. S. NSF grants (DEB 1257625, DEB 1144055 and DEB 1136644).Collections
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