Projections place the decline in the global ocean dissolved oxygen inventory at 1 to 7% by 2100, threatening marine community structure, species distributions, and biogeochemical cycling. Previous studies have used species assemblages to mechanistically predict the physiological and biogeographical effects of ocean oxygen limitation. However, this limits predictions to species whose hypoxic tolerance has been characterized in relation to temperature and oxygen concentration. Our study establishes a systematic metabolic relationship between oxygen demand, carbon consumption, and traits associated with functional fish guilds across species. This allows us to assess the energy and respiration contributing to size-at-age, reproduction, and activity for fish communities in a warming, deoxygenating seascape. We aim to scale these individual oxygen and carbon budgets using a size- and trait-based fish community model to resolve emergent community properties under ocean deoxygenation projections. We expect the results to show ocean deoxygenation reduces average individual size and compresses available vertical and geographic habitat.

Primary Presenter: Jonathan Eric Falciani, Technical University of Denmark (jonathan.e.falciani@gmail.com)

Authors:

Ken Andersen, Technical University of Denmark  (kha@aqua.dtu.dk)