Climate change is expected to cause a poleward shift of many temperate species, however, a better understanding of how temperature and species' life histories interact to produce observed adult range is often lacking. REEF data were featured in a new publication on this topic in the scientific publication, Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology. The publication's authors evaluated the hypothesis that juvenile thermal tolerance determines northern range in gray snapper (Lutjanus griseus), a species commonly caught as juveniles along the US Atlantic coast well north of their adult distribution, using a combined laboratory, field, and modeling approach. To evaluate the relationship between juvenile thermal tolerance criteria and adult distributions, the authors used the REEF database to quantify adult distribution. There was a strong correspondence between observations of adult gray snapper from the REEF database vs. latitude of the predicted survival of juveniles vs. latitude from their modeling analysis. The agreement between the laboratory-derived thermal tolerance measures, the spatial distribution of winter temperature, and the distribution of adult gray snapper support the hypothesis that the adult range of gray snapper is largely limited by the overwinter survival of juveniles. The authors stated that "understanding the interaction between physiology and range is important for forecasting the impacts of climate change on other species of fish where juvenile tolerances are critical in determining range, particularly in seasonal systems". The abstract of the paper and supporting figures can be viewed online here. Visit the REEF Publications page to see all of the scientific publications that have featured REEF data.
