Exploited marine fish distributions in Europe under past climates

Le résumé fourni par la source

Species distribution modelling is widely used to assess the responses of exploited marine species to environmental change, as shifts in their spatial distributions directly affect food security and fisheries-dependent socio-economic activities. To date, most studies have focused on forecasting future range shifts under ongoing climate change. In contrast, far fewer studies have examined how past environmental changes shaped the historical distributions of exploited marine fishes, despite the potential of such reconstructions to inform both archaeological research and expectations of future responses. Here, we investigate past spatial changes in the distributions of 17 of the most commonly exploited teleost fish species in Mediterranean and European waters using a species distribution modelling framework. We reconstructed species’ distributions under two contrasted palaeoclimatic periods, the Mid-Holocene (6 ka BP) and the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; 21 ka BP), spanning markedly different thermal regimes. Hindcast projections were further used to characterize latitudinal patterns of past environment suitability, providing a broad-scale perspective on how climatic variability historically constrained or redistributed suitable environmentsfor exploited species.Our results reveal negligible differences in environmentalsuitability between the Mid-Holocene and present-day conditions for all species, indicating limited large-scale environmental changes during the Holocene. In contrast, the LGM induced pronounced and species-specific reorganizations of suitable environment. Distributional responses were primarily driven by temperature and distance to the coast. Temperate species generally exhibited latitudinal shifts toward lower latitudes, whereas subtropical species showed widespread decreases in predicted suitability and stronger contractions of suitable area. Coastal species experienced major reductions in potential habitat extent, while offshore species were comparatively less affected. By providing spatially explicit environmental baselines, this study contributes to the interpretation of archaeological evidence and offers a long-term reference for discussing contemporary exploitation patterns in relation to past environmental constraints.

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