“Healthy food networks are essential for ecosystems, so that the world’s oceans can continue to provide a vital source of food for humans,” says Senior Lecturer Ivan Nagelkerken of the University of Adelaide Environment Institute.

Greenhouse fuel emissions: the fitness and patience of many marine species due to emerging seawater temperatures and CO2 levels. Revealing the reaction of marine trophic networks to climate replacement is a very important step in understanding ecosystems’ vulnerability to human impacts. Our studies show that ocean warming is reshaping species communities; the abundance of weed species is expanding, but the abundance of other species, especially invertebrates, is collapsing. “

The team, which published their study in the journal Science, recreated a coastal ecosystem of 3 major habitats in the Gulf of St. Vincent on the south Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) site in West Beach, Adelaide. This recreated ecosystem is then exposed to a simulation of acidification and ocean warming.

“Our studies have seen a long-term trophic pyramid that has shown that biomass has evolved at the base and at the top, but at the center,” explains Professor Nagelkerken.

“This trend would possibly characterize a transitional state before a marine ecosystem collapses into shorter, heavier trophic networks at the rear as sea temperature rises.”

“Where the Internet architecture of food lacks adjustments, ecosystems lack the ability to adapt to global substitution and are likely to deteriorate’,” says professor Sean Connell’s collaborator and co-author of the University of Adelaide’s Institute of environment.

Marine food networks that are unable to adapt to global settings show all the symptoms of transformation into a food internet ruled by destructive algae. Even if there were more plants on the back of the food internet, this higher power does not increase. to the internet of food. “

Additional warming and acidification of the oceans in the short to long term is likely to exaceract these effects, thus cutting species into the most sensitive food networks, such as fish.

“You can cross an ecological turning point beyond which you can no longer hold the most sensitive of food on the Internet, with a cave that comes in shorter, heavier trophic pyramids.” Professor Nagelkerken.