Ecological resilience of Arctic marine food webs to climate change

Gary P. Griffith (), Haakon Hop, Mikko Vihtakari, Anette Wold, Kjersti Kalhagen and Geir Wing Gabrielsen
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Gary P. Griffith: Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre
Haakon Hop: Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre
Mikko Vihtakari: Institute of Marine Research, Fram Centre
Anette Wold: Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre
Kjersti Kalhagen: Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre
Geir Wing Gabrielsen: Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre

Nature Climate Change, 2019, vol. 9, issue 11, 868-872

Abstract: Abstract How real-world marine food webs absorb change, recover and adapt (that is, ecological resilience) to climate change remains problematic. Here we apply a novel approach to show how the complex changes in resilience of food webs can be understood with a small core set of self-organizing configurations that represent different simultaneously nested and multiple-species interactions. We identified a recent emergent pattern of an improving but possibly short-lived resilience of a highly observed Arctic marine food web (2004–2016), considered a harbinger of future Arctic change. The changes can be explained by continuing subsidiary inputs of Atlantic species that repair (self-organize) interactions within some configurations. Despite significant environmental perturbation, we found that the core ecological processes are maintained. We conclude that Arctic marine food webs can absorb and begin to adapt to ongoing climate change.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0601-y

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