North Atlantic warming over six decades drives decreases in krill abundance with no associated range shift.

Edwards, M.; Hélaouët, P.; Goberville, E.; Lindley, A.; Tarling, G.A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3753-5899; Burrows, M.T.; Atkinson, A.. 2021 North Atlantic warming over six decades drives decreases in krill abundance with no associated range shift. Communications Biology, 4 (1), 644. 10, pp. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02159-1

Before downloading, please read NORA policies.

Preview

Text (Open Access)
Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © Crown 2021
s42003-021-02159-1.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Download (2MB) | Preview

Official URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-02159-1

Abstract/Summary

In the North Atlantic, euphausiids (krill) form a major link between primary production and predators including commercially exploited fish. This basin is warming very rapidly, with species expected to shift northwards following their thermal tolerances. Here we show, however, that there has been a 50% decline in surface krill abundance over the last 60 years that occurred in situ, with no associated range shift. While we relate these changes to the warming climate, our study is the first to document an in situ squeeze on living space within this system. The warmer isotherms are shifting measurably northwards but cooler isotherms have remained relatively static, stalled by the subpolar fronts in the NW Atlantic. Consequently the two temperatures defining the core of krill distribution (7–13 °C) were 8° of latitude apart 60 years ago but are presently only 4° apart. Over the 60 year period the core latitudinal distribution of euphausiids has remained relatively stable so a ‘habitat squeeze’, with loss of 4° of latitude in living space, could explain the decline in krill. This highlights that, as the temperature warms, not all species can track isotherms and shift northward at the same rate with both losers and winners emerging under the ‘Atlantification’ of the sub-Arctic.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02159-1
ISSN:	2399-3642
Date made live:	07 Jun 2021 11:07 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/530471

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02159-1

ISSN:

2399-3642

Date made live:

07 Jun 2021 11:07 +0 (UTC)

URI:

https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/530471