Líffræðifélag Íslands - biologia.is
Líffræðiráðstefnan 2025
Erindi/veggspjald / Talk/poster V86
Höfundar / Authors: Francesco Golin (A, B), Julian Burgos (A), Haseeb S. Randhawa (B), Martin Lindegren (C), Federico Maioli (C), Ingibjörg G. Jónsdóttir (A)
Starfsvettvangur / Affiliations: (A) Hafrannsóknastofnun, (B) Háskóli Íslands, (C) Technical University of Denmark
Kynnir / Presenter: Francesco Golin
The abundance and diversity of marine organisms is threatened by climate change and habitat loss. However, the effects are confounded in environments affected by other drivers, natural or anthropogenic in origin, making the investigation of the reasons behind the observed changes in the composition of biological communities challenging. To assess the effect and relative importance of such drivers in shaping the distribution of each species composing an assemblage, joint species distribution models (JSDM) can be used. Here, JSDM analysis is used to investigate the community assembly processes in deepwater fish, using Icelandic waters as a case study. This constitutes the first instance in which JSDMs have been applied to fish distribution data collected down to a depth of 1500 metres. Results show that temperature is a major factor determining fish occurrence and abundance across depths, indicating that deepwater species are vulnerable to climate change, just like more shallow water species. This, combined with a K-selected life strategy and exploitation of deep-sea resources, can lead to severe changes in deepwater fish distribution and diversity at large. These results are relevant for the conservation of deepwater biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as for the sustainable exploitation of commercially important species.