Susceptibility of European freshwater fish to climate change: Species profiling based on life‐history and environmental characteristics

Abstract

Climate change is expected to strongly affect freshwater fish communities. Combined with other anthropogenic drivers, the impacts may alter species spatio‐temporal distributions and contribute to population declines and local extinctions. To provide timely management and conservation of fishes, it is relevant to identify species that will be most impacted by climate change and those that will be resilient. Species traits are considered a promising source of information on characteristics that influence resilience to various environmental conditions and impacts. To this end, we collated life‐history traits and climatic niches of 443 European freshwater fish species and compared those identified as susceptible to climate change to those that are considered to be resilient. Significant differences were observed between the two groups in their distribution, life history, and climatic niche, with climate‐change‐susceptible species being distributed within the Mediterranean region, and being characterized by greater threat levels, lesser commercial relevance, lower vulnerability to fishing, smaller body and range size, and warmer thermal envelopes. Based on our results, we establish a list of species of highest priority for further research and monitoring regarding climate‐change susceptibility within Europe. The presented approach represents a promising tool to efficiently assess large groups of species regarding their susceptibility to climate change and other threats, and to identify research and management priorities.

Predicting the effects of climate change on future freshwater fish diversity at global scale

“…Recent findings indicate that freshwater fish species from lower latitudes and tropical warm-water habitats are at greater risk under climate change situations (Comte and Olden 2017;Payne and Smith 2017;Jarić et al 2019). Furthermore, the results obtained suggest that the rate of extinction would be higher for species with smaller body size and/or geographical range, in agreement with previous findings (Ficke et al 2007;Chessman 2013;Jarić et al 2019).…”

“…Consequently, there is an extreme geographical bias in these studies and very limited information is available on the potential responses of freshwater fish species inhabiting the southern hemisphere or the tropics (see Pelayo-Villamil et al 2018). There have been papers pub-lished on research at country-wide or continental scales (Booth et al 2011;Markovic et al 2012;Comte and Olden 2017;Markovic et al 2017;Jarić et al 2019). However, to date, no study has attempted to estimate the potential effects of future climate changes on freshwater fish at a global scale.…”

Direct and Indirect Climate Change Impacts on Brown Trout in Central Europe: How Thermal Regimes Reinforce Physiological Stress and Support the Emergence of Diseases

“…Riverine ecosystems are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as warming strongly alters the habitat conditions of fish (Comte et al, 2013). Meanwhile, around 30% of the European freshwater fishes are recognized as susceptible to climate change (Jarić et al, 2019). However, most studies still focus solely on direct effects mediated by temperature increase although climate change and the associated warming will have indirect effects, such as a pronounced emergence of pathogens, too.…”

Evaluation of the Methodology to Assess the Influence of Hydraulic Characteristics on Habitat Quality

“…Changing the riverbed morphology and, hence, faster water heating is a significant threat to fish, as they are ectothermic animals [16]. For this reason, fish are highly physiologically linked to local climate conditions, which can eliminate their resilience and tolerance to climate and anthropological changes [17]. According to [18], there are several methods to assess the consequences of changes in watercourses, but a key aspect is to assess and identify the relationships between ichthyofauna and physical components.…”