Читать книгу Ecology - Michael Begon - Страница 41

The effects of temperature on growth, development and size may be of practical rather than simply scientific importance. Increasingly, ecologists are called upon to predict. We may wish to know what the consequences would be, say, of a 2°C rise in temperature resulting from global warming (Section 2.9.2), or to understand the role of temperature in seasonal, interannual and geographic variations in the productivity of, for example, marine ecosystems. We cannot afford to assume exponential relationships with temperature if they are really linear, nor to ignore the effects of changes in organism size on their role in ecological communities. Figure 2.10b shows for 74 fish species how maximum size varies across a steep sea surface temperature gradient in the Mediterranean Sea. If the reason for this pattern is the temperature–size rule (rather than genetic differences between locations) there could be important implications for fishery yields in a warmer climate. Van Rijn et al. (2017) suggest that the most pronounced size reductions will occur in large, active, non‐migratory species that are often the major source of economic revenue, while elevated temperatures may have smaller effects on benthic, less active, and often less valuable, species. To optimise their catch, fishers may have to adapt their fishing strategies.