Changes in marine biodiversity: implications for ecosystem functioning and carbon cycles
International audience Although recent studies suggest that climate change may substantially accelerate the rate of species loss in the biosphere, only a few studies have focused on the potential consequences of a spatial reorganization of biodiversity with global warming. Here, we show a pronounced...
| Published in: | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Other Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
HAL CCSD
2010
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00762354 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0913855107 |
| Summary: | International audience Although recent studies suggest that climate change may substantially accelerate the rate of species loss in the biosphere, only a few studies have focused on the potential consequences of a spatial reorganization of biodiversity with global warming. Here, we show a pronounced latitudinal increase in phytoplanktonic and zooplanktonic biodiversity in the extratropical North Atlantic Ocean in recent decades. We also show that this rise in biodiversity paralleled a decrease in the mean size of zooplanktonic copepods and that the reorganization of the planktonic ecosystem toward dominance by smaller organisms may influence the networks in which carbon flows, with negative effects on the downward biological carbon pump and demersal Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). Our study suggests that, contrary to the usual interpretation of increasing biodiversity being a positive emergent property promoting the stability/resilience of ecosystems, the parallel decrease in sizes of planktonic organisms could be viewed in the North Atlantic as reducing some of the services provided by marine ecosystems to humans. |
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