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Climate change and warm-water species at the north-western boundary of the Mediterranean Sea
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Edité par CCSD ; Inter Research -
International audience. The effects of global change are particularly serious in areas where range shiftsof species are physically constrained such as the Ligurian Sea, which is one ofthe coldest sectors of the Mediterranean. In this basin, historical informationon water temperature (from the sea surface down to 75 m depth) dates backto the 1950s. Early studies also recorded warm-water species occurrence.Thanks to these data we provide the first detailed characterization of watertemperature variation from 1958 up to 2010 in the layer 0–75 m depth. Wecoupled this analysis with the available information on rocky reef epibenthiccommunities (literature review from 1955 to 1964 and field data from 1980 to2010). The analysis of water temperature revealed several patterns of variation:a cooling phase from 1958 to 1980, a phase of rapid warming from 1980 to1990 and a phase of slower warming from 1990 to 2010. Inter-annual variationin temperature increased over the entire period for the water layer down to20 m. Warm-water native and alien species richness increased during thewarming phases. Literature estimates suggest a decrease in warm-water nativespecies richness during the cooling phase. The analysis of quantitative data collectedin the early 1990s and late 2000s indicated a decrease in the cover ofwarm-water native species on shallow rocky reefs and an increase in deeperwaters. We argue that increased inter-annual variation in water temperaturemay disadvantage native warm-water species in shallow waters. Our resultsindicate that the effect of temperature rises in cold, constrained basins may bemore complex than the simple prediction of species changing their geographicalrange according to their thermal limits.
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