Arctic Sensitivity? Suitable Habitat for Benthic Taxa Is Surprisingly Robust to Climate Change

Abstract

Arctic marine ecosystems are often assumed to be highly vulnerable to ongoing climate change, and are expected to undergo significant shifts in structure and function. Community shifts in benthic fauna are likely to result from changes in key physicochemical drivers, such as ocean warming, but there is little ecological data on most Arctic species to support any specific predictions as to how vulnerable they are, or how future communities may be structured. We used a species distribution modeling approach (MaxEnt) to project changes over the 21st century in suitable habitat area for different species of benthic fauna by combining presence observations from the OBIS database with environmental data from a coupled climate-ocean model (SINMOD). Projected mean % habitat losses over taxonomic groups were small (0-11%), and no significant differences were found between Arctic, boreal, or Arcto-boreal groups, or between calcifying and non-calcifying groups. However, suitable habitat areas for 14 of 78 taxa were projected a change by over 20%, and several of these taxa are characteristic and/or habitat-forming fauna on some Arctic shelves, suggesting a potential for significant ecosystem impacts. These results highlight the weakness of general statements regarding vulnerability of taxa on biogeographic or presumed physiological grounds, and suggest that more basic biological data on Arctic taxa are needed for improved projections of ecosystem responses to climate change.

Comparison of functional diversity of two Alaskan Arctic shelf epibenthic communities

“…Arctic marine communities are at particular risk of experiencing competitive disadvantages relative to invading boreal species. Although Arctic taxa typically occupy a narrow temperature range, modeling studies suggest these taxa may be resilient to environmental pressures, including high temperatures (Renaud et al 2015(Renaud et al , 2019. Therefore, there is a need to better understand the resilience of these Arctic shelf communities to ongoing changes in the environment.…”

What and where? Predicting invasion hotspots in the Arctic marine realm

“…However, this particular aspect was somewhat offset by the fact that environmental conditions for reproduction, together with conditions needed for different life stages, were considered in this study during the species selection using provide valuable information to help manage resources in marine ecosystems that will face increasing anthropogenic pressures (Reiss et al, 2014) and has been shown to be a useful predictive tool to assess various taxa concurrently (Gallardo et al, 2015;Leidenberger, Obst, et al, 2015). SDM may also be particularly useful for regions such as the Arctic, where predicting biodiversity changes under global warming effects is challenging due to the paucity of baseline data for most organisms (Renaud et al, 2019;Wassmann, Duarte, Agusti, & Sejr, 2011).…”

“…The Barents Sea appears to be in transition from a cold Arctic to warm Atlantic climate regime (Lind, Ingvaldsen, & Furevik, 2018), making it particularly vulnerable to invasion. Indeed, it is predicted to suffer one of the largest future habitat losses by endemic species in the Arctic (Renaud et al., 2019), leaving potential niches available for novel species to occupy. Additionally, Arctic ecoregions will be more exposed to potential future arrivals with further ice reduction and increased navigability of the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage, although much greater investment in infrastructure, navigation and communications would be needed to this end (Buixadé Farré et al., 2014).…”

“…In this context, AIS could take advantage of new habitats and resources and outcompete native species, which are generally expected to be more sensitive to temperature changes given that they live within a narrow low‐temperature range (Peck, 2005). Invasive, non‐native and native boreal species could thus expand their ranges as suitable habitats in polar regions become more common (de Rivera et al., 2011; Goldsmit et al., 2018; Renaud et al., 2019; Ware et al., 2016) with subsequent impacts on richness, community composition and Arctic ecosystems. However, it remains unknown whether biogeographic boundary locations will change (Costello et al., 2017).…”

Climate-Driven Range Shifts of Brown Seaweed Sargassum horneri in the Northwest Pacific

“…Climate refugia could provide comparatively stable environments wherein macroalgae could persist (Ban et al, 2016;Rilov et al, 2019), and these may be identified by species distribution models (SDMs) run under climate extremes, such as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 20 Kya) and the warmer Mid-Holocene (MH, 6 Kya). SDMs are powerful tools for predicting the suitable distribution area of species and to understand how they may respond to climate change (see Renaud et al, 2019). Studies applying marine-based SDMs were predominantly carried out in the temperate North Atlantic (45%) followed by studies done at the global scale (11%) and those focused on temperate Australasia (10%) (reviewed in Robinson et al, 2017).…”