Meeting Abstract
Ongoing shifts in temperature and oxygen availability are thought to alter the abundance and distribution of metabolically-viable habitats for marine ectotherms. Motile species with larger bodies and longer lifespans can compensate by migrating long distances to inhabit more suitable waters. These “climate refugees” then interact with and potentially affect their new ecosystems. However, smaller-bodied species with short lifespans are thought to remain within ecosystems, where they exhibit recurrent boom-bust dynamics. California market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) is a small, abundant, and ecologically-important marine ectotherm that primarily inhabits the California Current (CC) in the northeast Pacific Ocean. With a typical lifespan of 6 months, population fluctuations in the CC that correlate with changes in oceanographic conditions have largely been attributed to boom-bust dynamics, and little attention has been given to the species’ latitudinal migratory potential. However, beginning in 2015, D. opalescens appeared in unprecedented abundance in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA), an ecosystem 3,000 km northwest of the central CC. We relate this multi-generational poleward migration to ecophysiology, life history, and trophic ecology, and examine the event’s historical, geographic, and environmental context. Our data suggest that the causes and consequences of climate-related migrations in small, short-lived marine ectotherms have important implications both for the life history of the migrants and the ecology of the communities and ecosystems into which they migrate.
