Rising global temperatures are often identified as the key driver impacting ecosystems and the services they provide by affecting biodiversity structure and function. A disproportionate amount of our understanding of biodiversity and function is from short‐term experimental studies and static values of biodiversity indices, lacking the ability to monitor long‐term trends and capture community dynamics. Here, we analyse a bienn...

Distributional shifts in species ranges provide critical evidence of ecological responses to climate change. Assessments of climate‐driven changes typically focus on broad‐scale range shifts (e.g. poleward or upward), with ecological consequences at regional and local scales commonly overlooked. While these changes are informative for species presenting continuous geographic ranges, many species have discontinuous distribution...

Aim Macroalgal habitats are believed to be the most extensive and productive of all coastal vegetated ecosystems. In stark contrast to the growing attention on their contribution to carbon export and sequestration, understanding of their global extent and production is limited and these have remained poorly assessed for decades. Here we report a first data‐driven assessment of the global extent and production of macroalgal hab...

Mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNA-CN) measured from blood specimens is a minimally invasive marker of mitochondrial function that exhibits both inter-individual and intercellular variation. To identify genes involved in regulating mitochondrial function, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in 465,809 White individuals from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium a...

Climate change and human pressures are changing the global distribution and the extent of intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams (IRES), which comprise half of the global river network area. IRES are characterized by periods of flow cessation, during which channel substrates accumulate and undergo physico‐chemical changes (preconditioning), and periods of flow resumption, when these substrates are rewetted and release pulse...

Shifts in species ranges are a global phenomenon, well known to occur in response to a changing climate. New species arriving in an area may become pest species, modify ecosystem structure, or represent challenges or opportunities for fisheries and recreation. Early detection of range shifts and prompt implementation of any appropriate management strategies is therefore crucial. This study investigates whether ‘first sightings...

Climate change is shifting species’ distribution and phenology. Ecological traits, such as mobility or reproductive mode, explain variation in observed rates of shift for some taxa. However, estimates of relationships between traits and climate responses could be influenced by how responses are measured. We compiled a global data set of 651 published marine species’ responses to climate change, from 47 papers on distribution s...

Aim To assess confidence in conclusions about climate‐driven biological change through time, and identify approaches for strengthening confidence scientific conclusions about ecological impacts of climate change. Location Global. Methods We outlined a framework for strengthening confidence in inferences drawn from biological climate impact studies through the systematic integration of prior expectations, long‐term data and qua...

Fine‐scale temporal patterning in grunt production and variation in grunt attributes in Atlantic cod Gadus morhua and pollack Pollachius pollachius was examined. Pollachius pollachius produced only a single sound type, the grunt, similar to that previously described for G. morhua . Sound production and egg production were correlated in P. pollachius but not in G. morhua . Only G. morhua displayed a strongly cyclical pattern, p...

There is increasing pressure from policymakers for ecologists to generate more detailed ‘attribution’ analyses aimed at quantitatively estimating relative contributions of different driving forces, including anthropogenic climate change ( ACC ), to observed biological changes. Here, we argue that this approach is not productive for ecological studies. Global meta‐analyses of diverse species, regions and ecosystems have already...

A regime shift is a large, sudden, and long‐lasting change in the dynamics of an ecosystem, affecting multiple trophic levels. There are a growing number of papers that report regime shifts in marine ecosystems. However, the evidence for regime shifts is equivocal, because the methods used to detect them are not yet well developed. We have collated over 300 biological time series from seven marine regions around the UK, coveri...

A general mechanism relating RNA concentration and growth rate is derived from four physiological assumptions and developed into a growth index for juvenile plaice Pleuronectes platessa . The index describing instantaneous growth rates ( G , day −1 ) in the laboratory with the lowest Akaike information criterion with small‐sample bias adjustment was a function of RNA concentration ( R , ), temperature ( T , ° K), body mass ( M...

Methods enabling the retrieval of oceanic parameter from the space borne instrumentation Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric ChartographY (SCIAMACHY) using Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) are presented. SCIAMACHY onboard ENVISAT measures back scattered solar radiation at a spectral resolution (0.2 to 1.5 nm). The DOAS method was used for the first time to fit modelled Vibrational Raman...

A biophysical model of the Irish Sea was produced to predict net horizontal movement of key taxa including small copepods ( Acartia , Pseudocalanus ), large copepod species ( Calanus finmarchicus and C. helgolandicus ), the euphausiid Meganyctiphanes norvegica , and the larval stages of commercially important fish and Nephrops . The model coupled biological information on the vertical distribution and diel vertical migration (...