Understanding jellyfish dynamics under global warming in disturbed and undisturbed marine systems
Marijana MiloslavićDavor LučıćBarbara GangaiIvona OnofriJavidpuor JamilehLopez Lopez LuciaMolinero Juan Carlos
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Abstract:
Jellyfish are conspicuous components of marine ecosystems and recognized as valuable indicators of ecosystem performance and change. Although changes in their population size have been described for long time, recent reports indicate an increase of jellyfish proliferations in different shelf seas worldwide. In this study we used a comparative approach based on time series data and ecosystem modeling to evaluate how food web complexity and ecosystem degradation interact with the dynamics of jellyfish. The ecosystems investigated represent two contrasting environments, the Kiel Fjord, south-western Baltic Sea, and the Marine Protected area of the National Park Mljet, in the south Adriatic Sea. The results show that jellyfish dynamics is favored by food web degradation, which together with global warming, allow higher variability in jellyfish outbreaks. The consequences of such dynamics may jeopardize the ecosystem resilience under global warming scenarios.Keywords:
Marine ecosystem
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This paper focuses on dynamics and changes in coastal shallow water ecosystem in the eastern Baltic Sea that is main habitat for representatives of malacostracan crustaceans and the most sensitive ecotone subjected to eutrophication and climate changes. Global warming has facilitated the rapid dispersal of everythermic crustaceans from Ponto-Caspian and Mediterranean basins to the Baltic Sea and further their high ecological significance in coastal communities. Climatic changes influence primarily on water temperature, hydrology and nutrient balance that can be environmental limits leading to deceleration of species number and abundance and change in trophic links within community. It analyses history, current distribution of malacostracan crustaceans and shifts in recipient communities in the north-eastern part (primarily Gulf of Finland) and compares with similar patterns in south-eastern part of the Baltic Sea (mainly Curonian and Vistula lagoons). Species and community responses to climate influence differ strongly between cold and warm years.
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The rise in water temperature in the Mediterranean Sea, and associated migrations of temperate marine biota, are occurring in the context of a global warming causing an expansion of the tropical jellyfish range, exacerbating jellyfish outbreaks linked to coastal development, nutrient loading, and overfishing. The gelatinous component of plankton is considered as ‘the dark side of ecology’ capable of appearing and disappearing at unpredictable times. In the last decade an increasingly high number of gelatinous plankton blooms are occurring and this makes us wonder if ‘a Mediterranean Sea full of jellyfish is a probable future’. The reasons for rising jellyfish blooms are, probably, manifold. Current studies are aimed to highlight how climatic change is interacting with the Mediterranean ecosystem favouring entrance, abundances and success of alien species and triggering ‘regime shifts’ such as from fish to jellyfish. Jellyfish damage the economic success of power plants, fish farms, tourism, and affect fisheries consuming larvae of commercial fish species. On the other hand, several studies were also taken into account on uses for jellyfish as biofuels and foods but more experimentation is needed to improve the first encouraging results.
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Major oceans of the world, Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Antarctic cover approximately 70 percent of the earth’s surface. Each ocean indeed represents a very large and stable ecosystem. Marine ecosystems are very diversified and involved in a complicated net of internal and external intercommunications. Their evolutionary history and present adaptive possibilities strongly depend on variability of climate conditions. Ocean basins in equatorial, tropical, and moderate zones are distinguished by the stability of environmental parameters and less affected by climatic anomalies. On the contrary, polar oceans were the arena of significant ecosystem changes in the geological past, and their response to natural and anthropogenic impacts is essential in many respects. Climate induced changes and other less-understood anthropogenic changes will be superimposed on other impacts resulting from human activities such as over fishing, pollution, damming of rivers and habitat loss in coastal areas. Consequently, the fundamental characteristics of marine ecosystems, some already under stress, will be altered. Whether overall global yield from marine fisheries will decline due to climate change remains unclear; however, regime shift within individual marine ecosystems and trends in fish landing for certain species will likely occur. Calcareous plankton and coral are already suffering because of more acidic and warmer seawater. Global warming as a whole is favourable for primary production and therefore for increase in biological productivity on all ecosystem levels.
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Jellyfish are critical components of marine ecosystems. Whether variations in their population size are driven by human or climate mediated processes is a matter of current debate and challenge in biological oceanography. Here we gathered pluriannual information of Mediterranean jellyfish to synthesize basin scale trends of jellyfish outbreaks, their strength and frequency, over last decades, and to quantify their potential link with hemispheric-wade climate forcing.
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