Modeling species richness and biogeographic patterns of Atlantic larger benthic foraminifera and a global perspective in terms of climate change

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Species Distribution Modeling (SDM) links actual species occurrence records to local environmental data and thereby allows to predict potential distribution ranges in space and time. It has become an effective tool for conservation management and helps to estimate the actual status and future loss in biodiversity. This is of particular importance for coral reefs that are globally threatened by climate change, pollution, and direct damage. Forecasts are predicting large-scale habitat loss and an equatorial retraction of reef area in the near future. Ocean warming will further lead to changes in biodiversity patterns, invasions of species into higher latitudes and ecological extinction of species especially in lower latitudes. Coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean are among the most endangered and are exhibiting massive and ongoing hard coral cover decline in many places. Symbiont-bearing Larger Benthic Foraminifera (LBF) are prolific marine calcifiers and are involved in reef-building and stability. They are also perfect proxy organisms for marine biodiversity as their patterns strongly correlate with those of other tropical marine taxa. Analyses on the biogeography of Atlantic LBF have so far been only performed on generic level and selected species.The primary goal of this project is a detailed analysis of species richness patterns of modern LBF created through SDM (1) to display the contemporary patterns and identify the center of LBF diversity in the Atlantic realm, and (2) to provide a global perspective of LBF richness patterns in terms of climate change for the time periods 2040–2050 and 2090–2100. This includes a compilation of high-resolution biogeographic maps and the depiction of latitudinal diversity gradients.The applied-for project will provide a premier comprehensive analysis of the Atlantic realm and thereby complete the picture of LBF biogeographic patterns. It will further help to localize the center of marine biodiversity in the Atlantic Ocean. The additional elaboration of future global scenarios aims to document and quantify the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity patterns. This will allow comparison to predicted patterns of other tropical marine taxa (e. g. corals) and, moreover, may help to refine the delineation of high-priority areas for conservation in Atlantic reefs and worldwide.