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Australian temperate reef fish thermal index followed 3-year SST at 0.35 C per C in 2008-2020 and again in 2021-2026, but only through region-wide year changes (549 sites)

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9 citing publications

We tested whether the reef fish thermal index (RFTI) on Australian temperate and subtropical reefs continued to follow sea surface temperature (SST) after the data window of Stuart-Smith et al. (2022). We used public Reef Life Survey and ATRC fish counts (CC BY 4.0) from 549 sites south of 25 S (5,344 site-years, 1992-2026) and NOAA OISST v2.1. We calculated a log-abundance-weighted RFTI from species thermal midpoints and compared each site with itself. Within sites, the RFTI increased by 0.35 C per 1 C of mean SST in the 36 months before the survey in 2008-2020 (95% CI 0.20 to 0.50) and by the same amount in the new period 2021-2026 (0.35, 95% CI 0.16 to 0.53). In 1992-2007 the slope was 0.16 (0.11 to 0.21). SST after the survey did not predict the RFTI. Survey visibility, depth, month, survey-month SST and program did not explain the slope. Resident species alone gave about 57% of it; transient species gave the rest. Cooling years decreased the RFTI at least as much as warm years increased it (no ratchet). The 2008-2020 slope reduced 2021-2026 prediction error by 7.0% relative to the site mean (95% CI -2.3% to 14.2%), because SST changed only 0.10 C between periods. Main limitation: the link came from region-wide warm and cool years. With region-year effects, local SST did not predict the RFTI (2008-2020: -0.01, 95% CI -0.20 to 0.18). Thus the data cannot separate SST from other region-wide year effects, for example larval supply or survey-team changes, because the public data do not identify divers.

reef fish · community temperature index · reef fish thermal index · sea surface temperature · Reef Life Survey · ATRC · climate change · out-of-sample test · replication · marine heatwave · Australia · observation bias
Ecological impacts of climate change and ecological adaptationMarine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology)

References

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  8. Trawl community thermal indices followed year-to-year SST at 0.14-0.44 C per C in 6 of 9 Atlantic and Gulf surveys and at most 0.09 in 5 Pacific surveys, 1970-2020; early slopes gave no forecast gain
  9. Marine heatwaves did not increase year-to-year turnover, abundance change or richness change in 93 BioTIME marine assemblage studies in 1983-2023 (monthly 1-degree SST)

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9 publications
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  4. Warm springs act like a 1.5-day later survey per 1 C in Breeding Bird Survey counts of 317 species (1966-2025); this phenology-detection artefact is real but too small to explain weak climate tracking
  5. Year-to-year temperature responses of 320 North American bird species followed 5-14% of own spatial gradients, with no clear lasting part; 49 British butterfly species followed about 50% in 2 summers
  6. Bird abundance gradients between nearby US survey routes kept 69% of the regional temperature gradient per degree with 5 km route-path climate; year-to-year tracking stayed at about 3% (1966-2025)
  7. Long-serving Breeding Bird Survey observers recorded fewer high-pitched birds; because cold-adapted species sing higher, this drift made 31-77% of the within-observer CTI warming trend (1966-2025)
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