Ocean currents and herbivory drive macroalgae-to-coral community shift under climate warming.

ABSTRACT: Coral and macroalgal communities are threatened by global stressors. However, recently reported community shifts from temperate macroalgae to tropical corals offer conservation potential for corals at the expense of macroalgae under climate warming. Although such community shifts are expanding geographically, our understanding of the driving processes is still limited. Here, we reconstruct long-term climate-driven range shifts in 45 species of macroalgae, corals, and herbivorous fishes from over 60 years of records (mainly 1950-2015), stretching across 3,000 km of the Japanese archipelago from tropical to subarctic zones. Based on a revised coastal version of climate velocity trajectories, we found that prediction models combining the effects of climate and ocean currents consistently expl

SUBMITTER: Kumagai NH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6130349 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature