Temperature alters the size selectivity of Southern Ocean fish

Eskuche-Keith, Patrick; Hill, Simeon L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1441-8769; López-López, Lucía; Rosenbaum, Benjamin; Saunders, Ryan A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1157-7222; Tarling, Geraint A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3753-5899; O'Gorman, Eoin J.. 2024 Temperature alters the size selectivity of Southern Ocean fish. Nature Communications, 15, 3979. 8, pp. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48279-0

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Text (Open Access) © The Author(s) 2024 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 licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence 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 licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. s41467-024-48279-0.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (14MB) | Preview

Abstract/Summary

A primary response of many marine ectotherms to warming is a reduction in body size, to lower the metabolic costs associated with higher temperatures. The impact of such changes on ecosystem dynamics and stability will depend on the resulting changes to community size-structure, but few studies have investigated how temperature affects the relative size of predators and their prey in natural systems. We utilise >3700 prey size measurements from ten Southern Ocean lanternfish species sampled across >10° of latitude to investigate how temperature influences predator-prey size relationships and size-selective feeding. As temperature increased, we show that predators became closer in size to their prey, which was primarily associated with a decline in predator size and an increase in the relative abundance of intermediate-sized prey. The potential implications of these changes include reduced top-down control of prey populations and a reduction in the diversity of predator-prey interactions. Both of these factors could reduce the stability of community dynamics and ecosystem resistance to perturbations under ocean warming.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48279-0
ISSN:	20411723
Date made live:	13 May 2024 10:41 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/535824

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