Nutritional ecology of climate change: Impacts on Northwest Atlantic fishes

海洋变暖正在改变全球鱼类种群的分布。然而，观察到的分布变化因物种而异，这导致了海洋群落和生物相互作用的变化。捕食者-猎物关系的改变可能会迫使饮食的改变，这可能会影响鱼的生长，并影响鱼在环境中生存的能力。该项目旨在预测鱼类行为如何影响物种、种群和生态系统对持续环境变化的反应。这项研究的重点是西北大西洋鱼类的分布和饮食，西北大西洋是地球上变暖最快的海洋系统之一。现有的长期数据集（1973年至今）构成了对过去50年来鱼类种群及其饮食变化进行回顾性分析的基础。根据这些数据开发的模型正在测试观察到的分布和饮食变化与物种特定行为和运动之间的关系。利用不同的气候预测，将这些信息纳入对2055年鱼类饮食性质和质量的预测中。更广泛的影响集中在扩大STEM职业的参与，其中包括培训学生和博士后。为了促进未来科学家的招募和教育，项目成果将被整合到缅因湾研究所的LabVenture项目中，该项目每年为缅因的10,000名小学生提供服务。与此同时，该项目正在与新罕布什尔州的海岸科学中心合作开发和测试教育模块。研究结果正在向地方和全国的渔业管理人员通报，并正在促进基于科学的资源管理。水温升高直接影响个体生物的代谢，间接影响其与猎物的重叠，这是种群分布中分类群特异性变化的结果。特定物种在空间分布和饮食上的变化可以调节或加剧海水变暖的代谢后果。此外，食物网结构及其组成的任何时间变化都可能影响生态系统的稳定性。饮食和空间利用的行为灵活性可以赋予个体物种对气候变化的适应能力，但缺乏经验证据。该项目结合了空间统计、多元分析和食物网模型，以了解变暖水域如何影响个体、物种相互作用和群落稳定性，并确定可能赋予恢复力的分类群特定行为。该项目正在进行回顾性分析，以量化鱼类分布和饮食的十年尺度变化，以及物种层面的饮食和运动灵活性。从这些分析中，利用三种气候变化情景来预测未来（2055年）捕食者-猎物相互作用的空间显性预测，以预测新的相互作用和重要掠食性鱼类的饮食变化。通过比较行为灵活和不灵活的物种之间饮食变化的能量后果，研究人员正在测试行为与适应变暖水域之间的联系。量化食物网组成部分之间的相互作用强度，有助于深入了解单个分类群的灵活性如何影响更广泛的食物网结构以及如何维持群落稳定。该项目由生物海洋学计划和促进竞争性研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Warming oceans are changing the distributions of fish populations worldwide. However, observed shifts in distribution differ from one species to the next, which lead to changes in the marine community and the biological interactions. Altered predator-prey relationships could force a switch in diet, which might influence growth and affect a fish’s ability to persist in the environment. This project aims to predict how fish behaviors contribute to responses of species, populations, and ecosystems to continued environmental change. The study is focused on the distribution and diets of fishes in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, one of the most rapidly warming marine systems on the planet. An existing long-term data set (1973 – present) forms the basis for a retrospective analysis of how fish populations and their diets have changed over the past five decades. The model developed from these data is testing how observed changes in distribution and diet are related to species-specific behaviors and movements. This information is incorporated into predictions of the nature and quality of fish diets in the year 2055 using different climate projections. The broader impacts are focused on broadening participation in STEM careers, which includes training of students and a post-doc. To advance the recruitment and education of future scientists, project results are being integrated into the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s LabVenture program, which serves 10,000 elementary students in Maine annually. In parallel, the project is partnering with the Seacoast Science Center in New Hampshire to develop and test educational modules. Research findings are being communicated to fisheries managers locally and nationally and are contributing to science-based resource management. Increased water temperatures impact the energetics of individual organisms directly by increasing metabolism and indirectly by altering overlap with prey as a result of taxon-specific shifts in population distributions. Species-specific shifts in spatial distributions and diets could mediate or exacerbate the metabolic consequences of warming waters. Furthermore, food web structure, and any temporal shifts in its composition, could affect ecosystem stability. Behavioral flexibility in diet and space use could confer resilience of individual species to climate change, but empirical evidence is lacking. This project combines spatial statistics, multivariate analyses, and food web models to understand how warming waters impact individuals, species interactions, and community stability, as well as identify taxon-specific behaviors that could confer resilience. This project is conducting retrospective analyses to quantify both decadal-scale shifts in fish distributions and diet, and species-level flexibility in diet and movements. From these analyses, spatially explicit predator-prey interactions are being projected into the future (2055) using three climate change scenarios to predict novel interactions and changes in diet for important predatory fishes. Linkages between behavior and resilience to warming waters are being tested by comparing the energetic consequences of diet shifts between behaviorally flexible and inflexible species. Quantifying interaction strengths among food web components is providing insight into how flexibility of individual taxa affects broader food web structure and how community stability is maintained. This project is jointly funded by the Biological Oceanography Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.