Sea surface temperature and habitat effects on juvenile reef fish communities along a tropicalising coastline

Aim: Temperate marine systems globally are warming at accelerating rates, facilitating the poleward movement of warm-water species which are tropicalising higher-latitude reefs. While temperature plays a key role in structuring species distributions, less is known about how species' early life stages are responding to warming-induced changes in preferred nursery habitat availability. We aim to identify the key ecological and environmental drivers of juvenile reef fishes' distributions in the context of ocean warming.

Location: South-eastern Australian coastline from 30-37°S.

Methods: We used a decade of underwater visual census data to uncover latitudinal distribution patterns of juvenile reef fishes and habitats across 1,000 km of coastline, from subtropical to temperate latitudes. We modelled how benthic habitat cover, depth, wave exposure and sea surface temperature influence distributions of warm-water and cool-water juvenile reef fishes on temperate rocky reefs.

Results: W...