Auteur moral

Auteur secondaire

Résumé

"The Mediterranean Sea is one of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world due to the variety and severity ofcumulative impacts faced, including high climate risk. Species distributions are expected to track climate nichesin response to warming, with meridionalization (i.e. northern spread of native warm-water species) as a commondocumented response. However, the Mediterranean environment is also highly heterogeneous and structured atregional scales, constraining generalized species responses. Based on long-term monitoring data of demersalcommunities in the Western Mediterranean (1994-2019), we calculated seven indicators characterizing thespace-time patterns of multiple species distributions and their temporal rates of change. Simultaneously, wecomputed climate velocity based on the space-time variation of sea surface temperature. Subsequently, wemodeled the space-time patterns of species distributions as response to climate velocity, taking into account thespecies' temperature and depth preferences. Contrary to the generalized northward expectation as a consequenceof communities' meridionalization, a large number of species have shifted their distributions toward the southand southwest to higher and medium r climate velocity values and averaged warmer conditions. In general, cold-water species with an affinity for low and moderate mean temperature and wide and narrow temperature rangeswere better at tracking climate velocity. Furthermore, species distributed over the continental shelf shifted towards shallower and inshore waters in response to high climate velocity, as opposed to shallower waters furtheraway and contrary to a priori expectations of shifts towards deeper waters, following the bathymetric gradient.The ranges of dispersion and the spatial heterogeneity of these species expanded, although not explicitly inresponse to climate velocity, suggesting additional synergistic drivers. Our results confirm the importance ofclimate velocity as a useful metric for predicting species responses at sub-regional levels and provide informationon expected species responses at the scales required for embracing regional to local management measures.

Editeur

Elsevier

Descripteur Urbamet

faune

Descripteur écoplanete

faune aquatique ;faune sauvage ;gestion et protection de la faune et de la flore ;changement climatique ;impact sur l'environnement ;migration animale ;réchauffement climatique

Thème

Maritime ;Environnement - Nature