Sophisticated model reveals how predator-prey relationships affect species’ ranges.
Ocean warming caused by climate change will lead to fewer productive fish species to catch in the future, according to a new Rutgers study. The study found that as temperatures rise, predator-prey interactions will hinder species from adapting to conditions where they could otherwise thrive.
The new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, presents a mixed picture of ocean health. Not only will large species and commercially important fisheries shift out of their historical ranges as climate warms, but they will likely not be as abundant even in their new geographic ranges. For instance, a cod fisherman in the Atlantic might still find fish 200 years from now but in significantly fewer numbers.
“Warming coupled with food-web dynamics will be like putting marine biodiversity in a blender.” Malin Pinsky
“What that suggests from a fisheries perspective is that while the species we fish today will be there tomorrow, they will not be there in the same abundance. In such a context, overfishing becomes easier because the population growth rates are low,” said study co-author Malin Pinsky, an associate professor in Rutgers’ Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources. “Warming coupled with food-web dynamics will be like putting marine biodiversity in a blender.”
Previous studies of shifting habitat ranges focused on the direct impacts of climate change on individual species. While these “one-at-a-time” species projections offer insights into the composition of ocean communities in a warming world, they have largely failed to consider how food-web interactions will affect the pace of change.
The new study looked at trophic interactions – the process of one species being nourished at the expense of another – and other food-web dynamics to determine how climate change affects species’ ranges.
Larger Predators Lag Behind in Adapting to Climate Change
Using sophisticated computer models, the researchers determined that predator-prey interactions cause many species, especially large predators, to shift their ranges more slowly than climate.
“These dynamics will not only be in one place but globally. That does not bode well for marine life, and this is not an effect that has been widely recognized.” Malin Pinsky
“The model suggests that over the next 200 years of warming, species are going to continually reshuffle and be in the process of shifting their ranges,” said lead author E. W. Tekwa, a former Rutgers postdoc in ecology, evolution, and natural resources now at the University of British Columbia. “Even after 200 years, marine species will still be lagging behind temperature shifts, and this is particularly true for those at the top of the food web.”
As the climate warms, millions of species are shifting poleward in a dramatic reorganization of life on Earth. However, our understanding of these dynamics has largely ignored a key feature of life — animals and other organisms must eat. The researchers have filled this knowledge gap by examining how the basic need for nourishment affects species’ movements.
Global Effects of Changing Food-Web Dynamics
The researchers developed a “spatially explicit food-web model” that included parameters such as metabolism, body size, and optimal temperature ranges. By accounting for climate change, their model revealed that dynamic trophic interactions hamper species’ ability to react quickly to warming temperatures. They also found that larger-bodied top predators stay longer than smaller prey in historical habitats, in part because of the arrival of new food sources to their pre-warming ranges.
“These dynamics will not only be in one place but globally,” Pinsky said. “That does not bode well for marine life, and this is not an effect that has been widely recognized.”
Reference: “Body-size and food-web interactions mediate species range shifts under warming” by E. W. Tekwa, James R. Watson and Malin L. Pinsky, 12 April 2022, Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences.
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.2755
Funding: Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Hakai Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation, National Science Foundation, National Science Foundation
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2 Comments
Crisis spawns innovation. Even in biology. let it go, this is all natural. Humans come from nature and make their own nature. This is natural. What comes out the other end is anyone’s guess, but something will evolve out of this and continue life on this planet.
Biologists continue to find new species in the ocean and learn new and surprising things about marine ecosystems. If they don’t even know what all lives there, how can they assume to know what will happen to the ecosystems? When headlines include such hyperbolic language as “putting biodiversity in a blender”, it diminishes scientific credibility which has become increasingly flimsy as of late, thanks largely to politics and popular outlets such as this one which are more interested in getting hits than scientific integrity.