Aim Understanding the processes that shape the distribution of biodiversity in the oceans is central for predicting and conserving ecosystems under global change. Although a vast literature exists on drivers of species diversity, the geographical patterns and drivers of ecosystem functioning, and in particular the traits that shape this functioning, remain relatively unexplored. We address this gap by testing the effects of en...

Aim Undersampling and other sources of sampling bias pose significant issues in marine macroecology, particularly when shaping conservation and management decisions. Yet, determining the extent to which such biases impact our understanding of marine diversity remains elusive. Here, utilising empirical data on sampling efforts, we sampled from virtually established species distributions to evaluate how deep is the influence of...

Climate change is altering ecosystems and fisheries throughout the world's oceans, demanding climate‐adaptive governance for conserving and managing living marine resources. While in some regions fisheries management systems address wider ecosystem dynamics within management frameworks and decision‐making, which may facilitate resilience to climate change, there remains a shortfall in terms of directly incorporating climate ch...

Climate change is increasingly impacting marine protected areas (MPAs) and MPA networks, yet adaptation strategies are rarely incorporated into MPA design and management plans according to the primary scientific literature. Here we review the state of knowledge for adapting existing and future MPAs to climate change and synthesize case studies ( n = 27) of how marine conservation planning can respond to shifting environmental...

Climate change effects on marine ecosystems include impacts on primary production, ocean temperature, species distributions, and abundance at local to global scales. These changes will significantly alter marine ecosystem structure and function with associated socio‐economic impacts on ecosystem services, marine fisheries, and fishery‐dependent societies. Yet how these changes may play out among ocean basins over the 21st cent...

Aim Latitudinal gradients of species richness represent Earth's first‐order biodiversity pattern. Most species groups display a near‐monotonic decline in richness from the equator to the poles, yet there exists little mechanistic theory to derive such patterns from first principles. Here we integrate two key advances – neutral theory and the metabolic theory of ecology – to reconstruct global species richness gradients and tes...

Perhaps the most pressing issue in predicting biotic responses to present and future global change is understanding how environmental factors shape the relationship between ecological traits and extinction risk. The fossil record provides millions of years of insight into how extinction selectivity (i.e., differential extinction risk) is shaped by interactions between ecological traits and environmental conditions. Numerous pa...

Aim Human impacts on the biosphere are a matter of urgent and growing concern, with ecologists increasingly being asked to project biodiversity futures. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ( IPBES ) is likely to comprehensively assess such projections, yet despite being widely used and potentially critical tools for analysing socio‐environmental futures, integrated assessment models ( IAM s) h...

Aim Three‐quarters of Octocorallia species are found in deep waters. These cold‐water octocoral colonies can form a major constituent of structurally complex habitats. The global distribution and the habitat requirements of deep‐sea octocorals are poorly understood given the expense and difficulties of sampling at depth. Habitat suitability models are useful tools to extrapolate distributions and provide an understanding of ec...

Cold‐water stony corals create habitat for a diverse range of deep‐water species but are thought to be threatened by ocean acidification due to oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO 2 . Knowledge of the severity of this threat is hampered by our limited understanding of the distribution and habitat requirements of these corals. Here we estimate the global acidification threat to these organisms using a global database of cold‐wat...

Benthic communities on seamounts are frequently characterised as being species rich, yet there is considerable variation in observed species richness. Although large‐scale patterns of species richness have been described from many marine and terrestrial habitats, their environmental drivers often remain poorly understood. We compared species richness of ophiuroids (brittle‐stars) on 60 seamounts throughout the South West Pacif...

Stony (scleractinian) corals are common on seamounts and can form extensive reef‐like structures which in turn provide important habitat for associated species. Aggregations of fish also occur on seamounts, which in recent decades have become the target of commercial bottom trawl fisheries that have damaging impacts on benthic communities. Such fisheries occur throughout the world’s oceans, and the majority are located on seam...

Aim Globally, species distribution patterns in the deep sea are poorly resolved, with spatial coverage being sparse for most taxa and true absence data missing. Increasing human impacts on deep‐sea ecosystems mean that reaching a better understanding of such patterns is becoming more urgent. Cold‐water stony corals (Order Scleractinia) form structurally complex habitats (dense thickets or reefs) that can support a diversity of...

The relationship between species richness and area is one of the oldest, most recognized patterns in ecology. Here we provide empirical evidence for strong impacts of fisheries exploitation on the slope of the species–area relationship (SAR). Using comparative field surveys of fish on protected and exploited reefs in three oceans and the Mediterranean Sea, we show that exploitation consistently depresses the slope of the SAR f...