Rising sea temperatures are already impacting marine organisms and fisheries, driving for example changes in species’ distribution, causing phenological mismatches between larvae and plankton, and affecting recruitment and productivity. However, despite being increasingly documented, the potential consequences of warming-induced changes in organismal growth and body sizes have received little attention.
Changes in body size can impact other life history traits such as maturity, fecundity, diet, habitat preferences, and predator-prey interactions—all of which can alter the functioning of size-structured ecosystems and commercial fisheries. There is no consensus on how warming seas will affect growth and size, let alone understanding the magnitude of the consequences of changes in body size and what it could mean for ecology, fisheries and ecosystems.
As global warming is likely to lead to further changes in body sizes, there is an urgent need to assess the possible consequences facing marine ecosystems and fisheries to understand the challenges that lie ahead. This session aims at assessing the consequences of changing body sizes of marine animals occurring in warming seas, with a focus on fish and fisheries, but studies on other organisms are also welcome. We are seeking contributions on (but not limited to) the following topics:
- Theoretical underpinnings of temperature effects of size and growth.
- Interrelations between growth and other life history traits (e.g., maturity, fecundity, sex ratios, longevity).
- Impacts of body sizes on species mobility, habitat use, and migrations/distributions.
- Evidence of changes in body sizes affecting predator-prey interactions and their consequences on size-structured food webs.
- Impacts of body size changes on markets and sales, changes in nutritional value, and implications for food security.
- Examples accounting for changes in fish body sizes in fish stocks assessment and management.
- Impacts on markets and fish sales, changes in nutritional value, and implications for food security.
