Evidence for climate‐driven synchrony of marine and terrestrial ecosystems in northwest Australia

Abstract

The effects of climate change are difficult to predict for many marine species because little is known of their response to climate variations in the past. However, long-term chronologies of growth, a variable that integrates multiple physical and biological factors, are now available for several marine taxa. These allow us to search for climate-driven synchrony in growth across multiple taxa and ecosystems, identifying the key processes driving biological responses at very large spatial scales. We hypothesized that in northwest (NW) Australia, a region that is predicted to be strongly influenced by climate change, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon would be an important factor influencing the growth patterns of organisms in both marine and terrestrial environments. To test this idea, we analyzed existing growth chronologies of the marine fish Lutjanus argentimaculatus, the coral Porites spp. and the tree Callitris columellaris and developed a new chronology for another marine fish, Lethrinus nebulosus. Principal components analysis and linear model selection showed evidence of ENSO-driven synchrony in growth among all four taxa at interannual time scales, the first such result for the Southern Hemisphere. Rainfall, sea surface temperatures, and sea surface salinities, which are linked to the ENSO system, influenced the annual growth of fishes, trees, and corals. All four taxa had negative relationships with the Niño-4 index (a measure of ENSO status), with positive growth patterns occurring during strong La Niña years. This finding implies that future changes in the strength and frequency of ENSO events are likely to have major consequences for both marine and terrestrial taxa. Strong similarities in the growth patterns of fish and trees offer the possibility of using tree-ring chronologies, which span longer time periods than those of fish, to aid understanding of both historical and future responses of fish populations to climate variation.

Predator‐mediated effects of severe drought associated with poor reproductive success of a seabird in a cross‐ecosystem cascade

“…Drought conditions in this area are also linked to regional oceanographic indices (McCabe‐Glynn et al, ), so this long ecological cascade ultimately begins with ocean‐atmosphere interactions and ends up looping back onto the marine food web via murrelets. Similar synchronous effects between marine and terrestrial ecosystems have been increasingly recognized through the effects of rainfall (Black et al, ; Ong et al, ; Thomsen et al, ), but our study is unique for the California Current system in that long‐term data revealed a stronger connection between terrestrial productivity and the reproductive dynamics of a marine predator. In 2013, much of California was in an exceptional drought of a magnitude that had not been experienced for perhaps over ~1,200 years (Griffin & Anchukaitis, ; Diffenbaugh, Swain, & Touma, ).…”

El Niño Southern Oscillation influences the abundance and movements of a marine top predator in coastal waters

“…The correlation between ENSO and the LC strength affects species biology and ecology within WA waters. For example, La Niña events have positive impacts on growth rates of fish (Nguyen et al., ; Ong et al., ) and corals (Ong et al., ) and altered the distribution patterns of aggregating whale sharks ( Rhincodon typus ; Anderson et al., ; Wilson, Taylor, & Pearce, ). During the strong La Niña event in summer 2011, there was an extreme warming of SST with anomalies of 2–4 ° C persisting for several months (Pearce & Feng, ), during which ecosystems and marine species were affected (Feng, McPhaden, Xie, & Hafner, ; Smale & Wernberg, ; Wernberg et al., ).…”

Strong evidence for changing fish reproductive phenology under climate warming on the Tibetan Plateau

“…Thus, by combining the environmental history and the otolith distance information, changes in fish reproductive phenology over time can be examined by a one-time sampling of juveniles and adults within different age classes based on the aforementioned assumptions. Past fish otolith studies using dendrochronological technologies have focused on understanding the changes in growth width chronologies in response to environmental change (Black et al, 2016;Izzo et al, 2016;Morrongiello et al, 2012;Ong et al, 2016), but no one has used these methods to help quantifying changes in fish reproductive phenology. Recently, the application of dendrochronology (tree-ring) technologies (crossdating) to fish otoliths has successfully addressed this challenge (Black et al, 2016;Morrongiello, Thresher, & Smith, 2012), thus providing the opportunity to investigate changes in fish reproductive phenology from otoliths.…”

“…Recently, the application of dendrochronology (tree-ring) technologies (crossdating) to fish otoliths has successfully addressed this challenge (Black et al, 2016;Morrongiello, Thresher, & Smith, 2012), thus providing the opportunity to investigate changes in fish reproductive phenology from otoliths. Past fish otolith studies using dendrochronological technologies have focused on understanding the changes in growth width chronologies in response to environmental change (Black et al, 2016;Izzo et al, 2016;Morrongiello et al, 2012;Ong et al, 2016), but no one has used these methods to help quantifying changes in fish reproductive phenology.…”