Publikationsdatum:
2017-05-12
Beschreibung:
Pleuragramma antarctica is the dominant forage fish of the coastal Antarctic,
exhibiting a circumantarctic distribution and a well documented abundance in
all shelf environments, from the high Antarctic Weddell and Ross Sea systems,
to the milder waters of the western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) shelf. Rapid
regional warming on the WAP has produced a dichotomy in annual weather
patterns between the high Antarctic systems and the WAP, resulting in swiftly
rising midwinter air temperatures and fewer sea ice days during the annual
winter cycle on the WAP, and little change in the Ross and Weddell Seas. The
WAP shelf thus provides a model system for examining the potential effects of
climate warming on an important Antarctic species.
Pleuragramma’s life history is characterized by slow growth, late maturity,
a high reproductive investment and an association with coastal sea ice for
spawning and larval development. All those features will allow the species to
weather episodic annual failures in recruitment, but not long term change.
Most effects of the increasing temperature associated with climate change
will be indirect ones, as temperatures will not increase to the point where
they are physiologically life-threatening in the short term. A recent survey
of Pleuragramma distribution on the WAP shelf revealed a large break in
its historical distribution in shelf waters, suggesting a collapse in the local
population of silverfish there. The break occurred in the area that has been most
heavily impacted by rapid regional warming: the northern mid-shelf including
Anvers and Renaud Island. It may be that the multi-faceted effects of climate
change are already at work in its local disappearance.
Repository-Name:
EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
Materialart:
Inbook
,
peerRev
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