Smaller fish species in a warm and oxygen-poor Humboldt Current system

Abstract

Species shifts Our anthropogenically warmed climate will lead to a suite of organismal changes. To predict how some of these may occur, we can look to past warm (interglacial) periods. Salvatteci et al . used this approach and looked at a marine sediment record of the Humboldt Current system off the coast of Peru (see the Perspective by Yasuhara and Deutsch). They found that previous warm periods were dominated by small, goby-like fishes, whereas this ecosystem currently is dominated by anchovy-like fishes. Such a shift is not only relevant to ecosystem shifts but also to fisheries because anchovies are heavily fished as a food source and gobies are much less palatable than anchovies. —SNV