Regime Shift in an Exploited Fish Community Related to Natural Climate Oscillations.

ABSTRACT: Identifying the various drivers of marine ecosystem regime shifts and disentangling their respective influence are critical tasks for understanding biodiversity dynamics and properly managing exploited living resources such as marine fish communities. Unfortunately, the mechanisms and forcing factors underlying regime shifts in marine fish communities are still largely unknown although climate forcing and anthropogenic pressures such as fishing have been suggested as key determinants. Based on a 24-year-long time-series of scientific surveys monitoring 55 fish and cephalopods species, we report here a rapid and persistent structural change in the exploited fish community of the eastern English Channel from strong to moderate dominance of small-bodied forage fish species with low temperatur

SUBMITTER: Auber A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4488883 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature