Macroscale patterns in body size of intertidal crustaceans provide insights on climate change effects.

ABSTRACT: Predicting responses of coastal ecosystems to altered sea surface temperatures (SST) associated with global climate change, requires knowledge of demographic responses of individual species. Body size is an excellent metric because it scales strongly with growth and fecundity for many ectotherms. These attributes can underpin demographic as well as community and ecosystem level processes, providing valuable insights for responses of vulnerable coastal ecosystems to changing climate. We investigated contemporary macroscale patterns in body size among widely distributed crustaceans that comprise the majority of intertidal abundance and biomass of sandy beach ecosystems of the eastern Pacific coasts of Chile and California, USA. We focused on ecologically important species representing differ

SUBMITTER: Jaramillo E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5421805 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature