Susceptibility of European freshwater fish to climate change: Species profiling based on life-history and environmental characteristics.

Ivan Jarić,Gregor Kalinkat,Johannes Radinger,Robert J Lennox,Gorčin Cvijanović

doi:10.1111/gcb.14518

Abstract

Climate change is expected to strongly affect freshwater fish communities. Combined with other anthropogenic drivers, the impacts may alter species spatio-temporal distributions and contribute to population declines and local extinctions. To provide timely management and conservation of fishes, it is relevant to identify species that will be most impacted by climate change and those that will be resilient. Species traits are considered a promising source of information on characteristics that influence resilience to various environmental conditions and impacts. To this end, we collated life-history traits and climatic niches of 443 European freshwater fish species and compared those identified as susceptible to climate change to those that are considered to be resilient. Significant differences were observed between the two groups in their distribution, life history, and climatic niche, with climate-change-susceptible species being distributed within the Mediterranean region, and being characterized by greater threat levels, lesser commercial relevance, lower vulnerability to fishing, smaller body and range size, and warmer thermal envelopes. Based on our results, we establish a list of species of highest priority for further research and monitoring regarding climate-change susceptibility within Europe. The presented approach represents a promising tool to efficiently assess large groups of species regarding their susceptibility to climate change and other threats, and to identify research and management priorities.

Highlights

As ectothermic organisms, fishes are intimately linked to local climatic conditions through physiological mechanisms that delimit tolerance or resilience (Comte & Olden, 2017a)
Our analysis comprised comparisons of in total 443 European freshwater fishes between those that were identified as threatened by climate change (n=148) within the IUCN
Our analyses indicated substantial differences between the two groups, climate change susceptible versus non-susceptible species

Summary

Introduction

Fishes are intimately linked to local climatic conditions through physiological mechanisms that delimit tolerance or resilience (Comte & Olden, 2017a). Relative to seas and oceans, freshwater habitats are more drastically impacted by changes in climate, especially due to changes in temperature and flow, and climate change is projected to strongly affect freshwater fish communities (O'Reilly et al, 2003; Buisson et al., 2008; Graham & Harrod, 2009; Harrod, 2016; Radinger et al, 2017). Combined with other anthropogenic impacts (e.g. land use change and thermal pollution; Radinger et al, 2016; Raptis et al, 2017), climate change will restrict or redraw thermal envelopes, contribute to population declines and local extinctions, and overall shifts in the distribution of species. In Europe, there is a broad range of climatic conditions experienced across the landscape and a diverse ichthyofauna distributed throughout the lakes and rivers (Ficke et al, 2007). Within the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) Red List, as much as

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