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Limited net poleward movement of reef species over a decade of climate extremes

Nature Climate Change volume 14, pages 1087–1092 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Warming seas are expected to drive marine life poleward. However, few systematic observations confirm movement among entire communities at both warm and cool range edges. We analysed two continent-scale reef monitoring datasets to quantify changes in latitudinal range edges of 662 Australian shallow-water reef fishes and invertebrates over a decade punctuated by climate extremes. Temperate and tropical species both showed little net movement overall, with retreat often balancing expansion across the continent. Within regions, however, range edges shifted ~100 km per decade, on average, in the poleward or equatorward directions expected from warming or cooling. Although some species responded rapidly to temperature change, we found little evidence for mass poleward migration over the decade. Previous studies based on extreme species observations, rather than tracking all species through time, may have overestimated the prevalence, magnitude and longevity of range shifts amongst marine taxa.

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Fig. 1: Sea surface temperature change, trends and thermal anomalies associated with the survey period at reef sites around Australia (2008–2022).
Fig. 2: Limited net movement in warm and cool edges of tropical and temperate reef species from 2010 to 2022.
Fig. 3: Regional latitudinal shifts were greater for cool range edges.

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Data availability

All original survey data can be directly accessed and downloaded through the RLS website and portal: https://reeflifesurvey.com/survey-data/. SST data from the NOAA Coral Reef Watch programme are freely available at https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/main/. The GitHub repository can be found at https://github.com/yannherfux/range_shifts (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12817835)68. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Data subsets and R scripts specifically used for this analysis are available via GitHub at https://github.com/yannherfux/range_shifts (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12817835)68.

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Acknowledgements

Support for field surveys was provided by the Australian Research Council; the Australian Institute of Marine Science; the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies; Parks Australia; Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania; New South Wales Department of Primary Industries; Parks Victoria; South Australia Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources; Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions; The Ian Potter Foundation; Minderoo Foundation; and the Marine Biodiversity Hub, a collaborative partnership supported through the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme. R.D.S.-S. was supported by ARC FT190100599. We thank the many colleagues and RLS divers who participated in data collection, and Antonia Cooper and Elizabeth Oh for data management. RLS and ATRC data management is supported by Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS)—IMOS is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. We are also grateful to the data curators of the NOAA Coral Reef Watch programme for managing extensive datasets and making them available to the public.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Yann Herrera Fuchs, Graham J. Edgar & Rick D. Stuart-Smith

  2. Department of Biology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Amanda E. Bates

  3. Division of Aquatic Ecology and Evolution, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Conor Waldock

  4. Department of Fish Ecology and Evolution, EAWAG, Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, Kastanienbaum, Switzerland

    Conor Waldock

Authors
  1. Yann Herrera Fuchs
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Contributions

Y.H.F. developed the analysis, code script and manuscript under supervision from R.D.S.-S. and G.J.E. R.D.S.-S. guided research questions and article structure. G.J.E. conceptualized methods to estimate range edges on the basis of abundance-weighted quantiles. A.E.B. and C.W. provided statistical support. All authors contributed to key ideas and interpretation.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yann Herrera Fuchs.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Manuel Hidalgo and Joice Silva de Souza for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Table 1 Number of range shifts greater than 1° latitude by guild, range edge and region
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Changes in Tasmanian temperate invertebrates’ cool edges
Full size table
Extended Data Table 3 Changes in southern temperate species’ warm edges
Full size table
Extended Data Table 4 Changes in southern temperate species’ cool edges
Full size table

Extended Data Fig. 1 Latitudinal distribution of range shifts.

Density curves show equatorward (dark grey) and poleward (light grey) range shifts where displacement was greater than 1° at warm and cool edges.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 Temperature fluctuations of Solitary and Lord Howe Islands.

Yearly averages of sea-surface temperature (SST) fluctuations for sites in Solitary Islands and Lorde Howe Island. Dashed lines indicate the date of the first year and last year these sites were surveyed, which are the two time points used to calculate site-level temperature and latitudinal limit changes in these locations.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Regional latitudinal shifts using data from 2010–2015 and 2016–2021.

a) Number of sites included in analysis per region and period each year. b) Replication of Fig. 3 using averages from all the years a site was surveyed at the two time periods. Positive values in warm and cool edges indicate range expansion and contraction, respectively. Asterisks (*) signal two-sided t-tests where p < 0.05 (mu = 0), for tropical and temperate species. Geographic restrictions for range shift detectability are presented as circles (no restriction), triangles (north coast sampling barrier) and squares (Southern Ocean habitat barrier). Data are presented as mean range shift values ± SEM in each region where N range edges > 10.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 4 Conceptual diagram of range edge estimation.

a) Warm (red) and cool (blue) limits were estimated for a species range from b) the latitudes associated with the 5th and 95th percentiles (black dashed lines) of cumulative abundance for a species distribution. See Methods for details.

Source data

Supplementary information

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Tables

Supplementary Tables 1 and 2.

Source data

Source Data Figs. 1–3, Extended Data Figs. 1–4, Extended Data Tables 1–4 and Supplementary Tables 1 and 2

Summarized datasets with range edge calculations for Figs. 1–3, Extended Data Figs. 1–4, Extended Data Tables 1–4 and Supplementary Tables 1 and 2.

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Fuchs, Y.H., Edgar, G.J., Bates, A.E. et al. Limited net poleward movement of reef species over a decade of climate extremes. Nat. Clim. Chang. 14, 1087–1092 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02116-w

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