Publication Date:
2005-07-30
Description:
The open oceans comprise most of the biosphere, yet patterns and trends of species diversity there are enigmatic. Here, we derive worldwide patterns of tuna and billfish diversity over the past 50 years, revealing distinct subtropical "hotspots" that appeared to hold generally for other predators and zooplankton. Diversity was positively correlated with thermal fronts and dissolved oxygen and a nonlinear function of temperature (approximately 25 degrees C optimum). Diversity declined between 10 and 50% in all oceans, a trend that coincided with increased fishing pressure, superimposed on strong El Nino-Southern Oscillation-driven variability across the Pacific. We conclude that predator diversity shows a predictable yet eroding pattern signaling ecosystem-wide changes linked to climate and fishing.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Worm, Boris -- Sandow, Marcel -- Oschlies, Andreas -- Lotze, Heike K -- Myers, Ransom A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2005 Aug 26;309(5739):1365-9. Epub 2005 Jul 28.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Biology Department, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 4J1. bworm@dal.ca〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16051749" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Biodiversity
;
Climate
;
*Ecosystem
;
Fisheries
;
Oceans and Seas
;
Oxygen/analysis
;
*Perciformes
;
Population Density
;
*Predatory Behavior
;
Regression Analysis
;
Seasons
;
Temperature
;
Time Factors
;
*Tuna
;
Zooplankton
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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