[AOS19-01] On three important ecological properties linking ocean changes to marine biodiversity and ecosystems impacts under a changing climate
★Invited Papers
Keywords:Climate change, Trophies transfer efficiency, Body size, Thermal tolerance, Biodiversity, Ecosystem functions
Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide are driving changes in the physical and biogeochemical properties of the ocean. Impacts of these oceanographic changes on marine ecosystems, from phytoplankton to fishes and seabirds, with consequences for human societies have been observed in many cases. Marine ecosystem impact models have also projected increasing climate-risk on marine biodiversity and ecosystem services with large regional variations. Understanding the mechanisms linking the changing ocean conditions to ecosystem impacts is necessary for improving the robustness of detection, attribution and projection of climate impacts and risks on biodiversity and dependent human communities.
Here, I highlight the state of knowledge and scope for further understanding of three ecological properties, namely thermal tolerance, trophic transfer efficiency and body size, that have largely shaped our understanding of the effects of ocean warming, deoxygenation and changing nutrient supplies on marine ecosystem structure and functions. Recent analyses using large marine biodiversity databases have demonstrated the important role of species’ thermal tolerances in determining global ocean biogeography and their responses to warming. Empirical analyses of fisheries and survey data suggest that trophic transfer efficiency (the efficiency of passing energy from primary production up the food chain) of marine ecosystems vary systematically by temperature and food web structure. Body size imposes a first-order geometric constraint on physiology of marine organisms and their ecological interactions with others. Body size is now widely used for predicting a variety of climate impacts on marine ecosystems, from fishes’ sensitivity to deoxygenation to alteration of trophodynamics and fisheries production. Integrating these three ecological properties can help assess past trends and project future changes of global and regional marine biodiversity and ecosystem functions under changing multiple ocean physical and biogeochemical drivers. We illustrate the potential for such integrations using models and their outputs from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystems Model Intercomparison Project (FishMIP). The synthesis of knowledge on these three ecological properties could inform new hypotheses of climate impacts in the ocean, and future development of ecosystem and fisheries impact models.
Here, I highlight the state of knowledge and scope for further understanding of three ecological properties, namely thermal tolerance, trophic transfer efficiency and body size, that have largely shaped our understanding of the effects of ocean warming, deoxygenation and changing nutrient supplies on marine ecosystem structure and functions. Recent analyses using large marine biodiversity databases have demonstrated the important role of species’ thermal tolerances in determining global ocean biogeography and their responses to warming. Empirical analyses of fisheries and survey data suggest that trophic transfer efficiency (the efficiency of passing energy from primary production up the food chain) of marine ecosystems vary systematically by temperature and food web structure. Body size imposes a first-order geometric constraint on physiology of marine organisms and their ecological interactions with others. Body size is now widely used for predicting a variety of climate impacts on marine ecosystems, from fishes’ sensitivity to deoxygenation to alteration of trophodynamics and fisheries production. Integrating these three ecological properties can help assess past trends and project future changes of global and regional marine biodiversity and ecosystem functions under changing multiple ocean physical and biogeochemical drivers. We illustrate the potential for such integrations using models and their outputs from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystems Model Intercomparison Project (FishMIP). The synthesis of knowledge on these three ecological properties could inform new hypotheses of climate impacts in the ocean, and future development of ecosystem and fisheries impact models.