Climate-driven zooplankton shifts cause large-scale declines in food quality for fish

Ryan F. Heneghan (), Jason D. Everett, Julia L. Blanchard, Patrick Sykes and Anthony J. Richardson
Additional contact information
Ryan F. Heneghan: Queensland University of Technology
Jason D. Everett: The University of Queensland
Julia L. Blanchard: University of Tasmania
Patrick Sykes: The University of Queensland
Anthony J. Richardson: The University of Queensland

Nature Climate Change, 2023, vol. 13, issue 5, 470-477

Abstract: Abstract Zooplankton are the primary energy pathway from phytoplankton to fish. Yet, there is limited understanding about how climate change will modify zooplankton communities and the implications for marine food webs globally. Using a trait-based marine ecosystem model resolving key zooplankton groups, we find that future oceans, particularly in tropical regions, favour food webs increasingly dominated by carnivorous (chaetognaths, jellyfish and carnivorous copepods) and gelatinous filter-feeding zooplankton (larvaceans and salps) at the expense of omnivorous copepods and euphausiids. By providing a direct energetic pathway from small phytoplankton to fish, the rise of gelatinous filter feeders partially offsets the increase in trophic steps between primary producers and fish from declining phytoplankton biomass and increases in carnivorous zooplankton. However, future fish communities experience reduced carrying capacity from falling phytoplankton biomass and less nutritious food as environmental conditions increasingly favour gelatinous zooplankton, slightly exacerbating projected declines in small pelagic fish biomass in tropical regions by 2100.

Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01630-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:13:y:2023:i:5:d:10.1038_s41558-023-01630-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01630-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().