Opposing life stage-specific effects of ocean warming at source and sink populations of range-shifting coral-reef fishes

Cristián J Monaco; Ivan Nagelkerken; David J Booth; Will F Figueira; Bronwyn M Gillanders; David S Schoeman; Corey J A Bradshaw

doi:10.1111/1365-2656.13394

Opposing life stage-specific effects of ocean warming at source and sink populations of range-shifting coral-reef fishes

J Anim Ecol. 2021 Mar;90(3):615-627. doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.13394. Epub 2020 Dec 10.

Authors

Cristián J Monaco^{1

2}, Ivan Nagelkerken¹, David J Booth³, Will F Figueira⁴, Bronwyn M Gillanders¹, David S Schoeman^{5

6}, Corey J A Bradshaw⁷

Affiliations

¹ Southern Seas Ecology Laboratories, School of Biological Sciences and The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
² IFREMER, IRD, Institut Louis-Malardé, Univ Polynésie française, EIO, Taravao, Tahiti, Polynésie française.
³ School of the Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia.
⁴ School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia.
⁵ Global-Change Ecology Research Group, School of Science and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, QLD, Australia.
⁶ Centre for African Conservation Ecology, Department of Zoology, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
⁷ Global Ecology, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia.

PMID: 33232514
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.13394

Abstract

Climate change is altering the latitudinal distributions of species, with their capacity to keep pace with a shifting climate depending on the stochastic expression of population growth rates, and the influence of compensatory density feedback on age-specific survival rates. We use population-abundance time series at the leading edge of an expanding species' range to quantify the contribution of stochastic environmental drivers and density feedbacks to the dynamics of life stage-specific population growth. Using a tropical, range-shifting Indo-Pacific damselfish (Abudefduf vaigiensis) as a model organism, we applied variants of the phenomenological Gompertz-logistic model to a 14-year dataset to quantify the relative importance of density feedback and stochastic environmental drivers on the separate and aggregated population growth rates of settler and juvenile life stages. The top-ranked models indicated that density feedback negatively affected the growth of tropical settlers and juveniles. Rates of settlement were negatively linked to temperatures experienced by parents at potential source populations in the tropics, but their subsequent survival and that of juveniles increased with the temperatures experienced at the temperate sink. Including these stochastic effects doubled the deviance explained by the models, corroborating an important role of temperature. By incorporating sea-surface temperature projections for the remainder of this century into these models, we anticipate improved conditions for the population growth of juvenile coral-reef fishes, but not for settlers in temperate ecosystems. Previous research has highlighted the association between temperature and the redistribution of species. Our analyses reveal the contrasting roles of different life stages in the dynamics of range-shifting species responding to climate change, as they transition from vagrancy to residency in their novel ranges.

Keywords: climate change; coral reefs; global warming; marine fishes; range shifts; species distribution; temperate ecosystems; transient population dynamics.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Anthozoa*
Climate Change
Coral Reefs
Ecosystem*
Fishes
Oceans and Seas