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Climate change. Ecosystems in the ocean are more sensitive to climate change than anywhere else on Earth. This is due to warmer temperatures and ocean acidification. With the ocean temperatures increasing, it is predicted that fish species will move from their known ranges and locate new areas.
A study highlighted in a 2022 Nature article underscores the broader climate benefits of tropical forests beyond carbon storage. Tropical forests cool the planet by one-third of a degree through biophysical mechanisms such as humidifying the air and releasing cooling chemicals, in addition to their role in extracting carbon dioxide from the air.
Whole ecosystem disruptions will occur earlier under more intense climate change: under the high-emissions RCP8.5 scenario, ecosystems in the tropical oceans would be the first to experience abrupt disruption before 2030, with tropical forests and polar environments following by 2050. In total, 15% of ecological assemblages would have over 20% ...
The number of trophic links per consumer is a measure of food web connectance. Food chains are nested within the trophic links of food webs. Food chains are linear (noncyclic) feeding pathways that trace monophagous consumers from a base species up to the top consumer, which is usually a larger predatory carnivore. [8] [9] [10]
Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate ...
Climate change affects tropical cyclones in a variety of ways: an intensification of rainfall and wind speed, an increase in the frequency of very intense storms and a poleward extension of where the cyclones reach maximum intensity are among the consequences of human-induced climate change. [62] [63] Tropical cyclones use warm, moist air as ...
Coccolithophores are of interest to those studying global climate change because as ocean acidity increases, their coccoliths may become even more important as a carbon sink. [55] The most abundant species of coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi is an ubiquitous component of the plankton base in marine food webs . [ 56 ]
The importance of this contribution has been rapidly acknowledged within the scientific community and has prompted an entirely new trajectory of kelp forest research, highlighting the potential for kelp forests to provide marine organisms spatial refuge under climate change and providing possible explanations for evolutionary patterns of kelps ...