Supporting Data for Ocean acidification drives global reshuffling of ecological communities

The paradigm that climate change will alter global marine biodiversity is
one of the most widely accepted. Yet, its predictions remain difficult to
test because laboratory systems are inadequate at incorporating ecological
complexity, and common biodiversity metrics have varying sensitivity to
detect change. Here, we test for the prevalence of global responses in
biodiversity and community-level change to future climate (acidification
and warming) from studies at volcanic CO2 vents across four major global
coastal ecosystems and studies in laboratory mesocosms. We detected
globally replicable patterns of species replacements and community
reshuffling under ocean acidification in major natural ecosystems, yet
species diversity and other common biodiversity metrics were often
insensitive to detect such community change, even under significant
habitat loss. Where there was a lack of consistent patterns of
biodiversity change, these were a function of similar numbers of studies
observing negative vs positive species responses to climate stress.
Laboratory studies showed weaker sensitivity to detect species
replacements and community reshuffling in general. We conclude that common
biodiversity metrics can be insensitive in revealing the anticipated
effects of climate stress on biodiversity – even under significant
biogenic habitat loss – and can mask widespread reshuffling of ecological
communities in a future ocean. Whilst the influence of ocean acidification
on community restructuring can be less evident than species loss, such
changes can drive the dynamics of ecosystem stability or their functional
change. Importantly, species identity matters, representing a substantial
influence of future oceans.