Ocean currents modify the coupling between climate change and biogeographical shifts.

ABSTRACT: Biogeographical shifts are a ubiquitous global response to climate change. However, observed shifts across taxa and geographical locations are highly variable and only partially attributable to climatic conditions. Such variable outcomes result from the interaction between local climatic changes and other abiotic and biotic factors operating across species ranges. Among them, external directional forces such as ocean and air currents influence the dispersal of nearly all marine and many terrestrial organisms. Here, using a global meta-dataset of observed range shifts of marine species, we show that incorporating directional agreement between flow and climate significantly increases the proportion of explained variance. We propose a simple metric that measures the degrees of directional agr

SUBMITTER: Garcia Molinos J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5431058 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature