Data for: Warming temperatures limit the maximum body length of teleost fishes across a latitudinal gradient in Norwegian waters

As the majority of marine organisms are water-breathing ectotherms,
temperature and dissolved oxygen are key environmental variables that
influence their fitness and geographic distribution. In line with the
gill-oxygen limitation theory (GOLT), the maximum asymptotic body size of
water-breathing ectotherms is limited by an insufficient amount of oxygen
that is supplied to meet metabolic demand once a threshold of gill surface
area to body weight ratio is surpassed. Here we employed generalised
additive models (GAMs) to investigate the relative influence of
temperature, regional variation in dissolved oxygen, and geographic
location (that encompasses multiple latent variables) on the maximum body
length of ten teleost fish species, as well to predict their maximum body
length, across a large temperature, depth and latitudinal gradient
throughout Norwegian waters. As dissolved oxygen levels were near
saturation across the study area, we conclude that the predicted maximum
lengths of our study species were not limited by oxygen availability.
Conversely, the majority of study species display a clear relationship in
that their predicted maximum length is either decreasing, asymptotic or
parabolic across their observed temperature range. We also observed
smaller maximum body lengths for multiple species within the coldest
extent of their temperature range, which may be explained by increases in
basal metabolism via cold denaturation. Overall, our results suggest that
the maximum lengths of our study species are influenced by temperature,
thus supporting the tenants of the GOLT.