Climate change alters the structure of arctic marine food webs due to poleward shifts of boreal generalists.
Climate-driven poleward shifts, leading to changes in species composition and relative abundances, have been recently documented in the Arctic. Among the fastest moving species are boreal generalist fish which are expected to affect arctic marine food web structure and ecosystem functioning substantially. Here, we address structural changes at the food web level induced by poleward shifts via topological network analysis of highly resolved boreal and arctic food webs of the Barents Sea. We detected considerable differences in structural properties and link configuration between the boreal and the arctic food webs, the latter being more modular and less connected. We found that a main characteristic of the boreal fish moving poleward into the arctic region of the Barents Sea is high generalism, a property that increases connectance and reduces modularity in the arctic marine food web. Our results reveal that habitats form natural boundaries for food web modules, and that generalists play an important functional role in coupling pelagic and benthic modules. We posit that these habitat couplers have the potential to promote the transfer of energy and matter between habitats, but also the spread of pertubations, thereby changing arctic marine food web structure considerably with implications for ecosystem dynamics and functioning.
Norwegian College of Fishery Science, UIT the Arctic University of Norway, 9037 Tromsø, Norway susanne.kortsch@uit.no.
Susanne
S
Kortsch
Norwegian College of Fishery Science, UIT the Arctic University of Norway, 9037 Tromsø, Norway.
Raul
R
Primicerio
Institute of Marine Research (IMR), 9294 Tromsø, Norway.
Maria
M
Fossheim
Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (PINRO), 6 Knipovich Street, 183038 Murmansk, Russia.
Andrey V
AV
Dolgov
Norwegian College of Fishery Science, UIT the Arctic University of Norway, 9037 Tromsø, Norway.
Michaela
M
Aschan
D000818:Animals; D059001:Aquatic Organisms; D001110:Arctic Regions; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D005399:Fishes / Q000502:physiology*; D020387:Food Chain; D005843:Geography; D009792:Oceans and Seas
biogeography; climate warming; fish community; food web topology; modularity; network structure