BioTIME v2 marine assemblages did not show larger richness gains with warming in warmer seas, in v1-era studies or in studies added in 2024 (23.5-60 degrees latitude)

Antao et al. (2020) used BioTIME v1 and reported that temperate marine species richness increased with local warming. They reported that this increase was about twice as large in warmer locations, that abundance decreased with warming in the warmest locations, and that land assemblages had no systematic response. We tested these claims in BioTIME 2.0. The 382 studies added in 2024 are an independent replication sample, and the 326 v1-era studies are a re-test. We built 22,996 assemblage time series (study x ~11 km cell, at least 5 years, 23.5-60 degrees latitude) from 374 studies. We rarefied each year to the minimum sample count of the series and calculated OLS slopes of log richness and log abundance. We regressed these slopes on the local temperature trend (NOAA ERSSTv5 for sea, GHCN_CAMS for land) and its interaction with baseline temperature, in 14 specifications. Marine richness had no overall link to warming: the pooled slope was +0.02 +- 0.10 log units per decade per 1 C/decade. The warming x baseline interaction was negative in 38 of 42 marine specifications and positive with p < 0.05 in none. This sign is opposite to the published claim. With inverse-variance weights, the v1-era interaction was -0.041 +- 0.007 per C, and it stayed in the range -0.043 to -0.032 when any one study was removed. In the 2024 studies, the interaction was -0.034 +- 0.023, which is not clear. The published abundance pattern occurred only with inverse-variance weights in v1-era data, depended on one trawl survey, had the opposite sign with equal study weights, and did not repeat in the 2024 studies. In each sample, the three largest surveys held 57-88% of the inverse-variance weight. Limitations: this is a re-implementation with different cells, temperature products and weights; the 2024 marine sample is small and mostly seabirds; and between-study confounding remains. The bundle has code, aggregate results and figures. Record-level BioTIME data remain outside the bundle.

BioTIME · biodiversity change · species richness · abundance · climate warming · sea surface temperature · assemblage time series · replication · meta-analysis weighting · rarefaction · marine · terrestrial · ERSSTv5 · GHCN_CAMS · influential studies