Global Patterns of Coastal Cephalopod Diversity Under Climate Change

Abstract

Coastal marine ecosystems are currently being exposed to climate change at a much faster rate than many other ecosystems, with coastal species being exposed to multiple stressors. Cephalopod mollusks play a pivotal role in marine trophic webs, and most are “keystone” species due to their influence on ecosystem dynamics. In this study, we characterized the global patterns of coastal cephalopod diversity and present, for the first time, a global forecast of potential changes in richness, mean body size, and assemblage composition (i.e., species replacement, nestedness, and combinations of both) for 161 coastal cephalopod species under climate change, using an ensemble of ecological niche models (ENMs) for an end of the century mitigation scenario. We have shown that, for the baseline period, coastal cephalopod diversity is higher in the Central Indo-Pacific area and that body size patterns follow the temperature-size rule, with larger animals occurring at higher latitudes. The end-century projections of habitat suitability show a different picture, with 96% of cephalopod species predicted to experience range contraction and 15% completely losing their environmental space. Nestedness is projected to be the main effect of species compositional change. Maximum body size is projected to increase in 44% of the pixels and decrease in 37%. Regarding fisheries, the projected changes are more favorable to the countries at higher latitudes, although the search for refugia of smaller tropical species might potentially lead to a mitigation of the negative effects of climate change in these areas, as measured by the total capture (ton). While the model has limitations, our findings reflect major climatic drivers of change and highlight the idea that even though cephalopod species seem good candidates to replace overexploited fish stocks in the near future, they may not have the environmental space to do so.