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ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access originally published online on March 11, 2008
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 2008 65(3):279-295; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsn028
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© 2008 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

In hot water: zooplankton and climate change

Anthony J. Richardson

Climate Adaptation Flagship, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, PO Box 120, Cleveland, QLD 4163 and Department of Mathematics, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia (Honorary Research Fellow, Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science, SAHFOS)

tel: +61 7 38267183; fax: +61 7 38267222; e-mail: anthony.richardson{at}csiro.au

Richardson, A. J. 2008. In hot water: zooplankton and climate change. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 279–295.

An overview is provided of the observed and potential future responses of zooplankton communities to global warming. I begin by describing the importance of zooplankton in ocean ecosystems and the attributes that make them sensitive beacons of climate change. Global warming may have even greater repercussions for marine ecosystems than for terrestrial ecosystems, because temperature influences water column stability, nutrient enrichment, and the degree of new production, and thus the abundance, size composition, diversity, and trophic efficiency of zooplankton. Pertinent descriptions of physical changes in the ocean in response to climate change are given as a prelude to a detailed discussion of observed impacts of global warming on zooplankton. These manifest as changes in the distribution of individual species and assemblages, in the timing of important life-cycle events, and in abundance and community structure. The most illustrative case studies, where climate has had an obvious, tangible impact on zooplankton and substantial ecosystem consequences, are presented. Changes in the distribution and phenology of zooplankton are faster and greater than those observed for terrestrial groups. Relevant projected changes in ocean conditions are then presented, followed by an exploration of potential future changes in zooplankton communities from the perspective of different modelling approaches. Researchers have used a range of modelling approaches on individual species and functional groups forced by output from climate models under future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. I conclude by suggesting some potential future directions in climate change research for zooplankton, viz. the use of richer zooplankton functional groups in ecosystem models; greater research effort in tropical systems; investigating climate change in conjunction with other human impacts; and a global zooplankton observing system.

Keywords: climate change, climate variability, distribution, global change, global warming, phenology, zooplankton

Received 1 September 2007; accepted 13 January 2008; advance access publication 11 March 2008.


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