Potential Spatial Mismatches Between Marine Predators and Their Prey in the Southern Hemisphere in Response to Climate Change

18 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, supporting information https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70080.-- Data Availability Statement: The data that support the findings of this study and the code used to generate the pseudoabsences, extract the environmental variables, fit and predict the model are openly available in Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14710700. Environmental variables data were obtained from the Inter-Sectorial Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) portal at https://doi.org/10.48364/ISIMIP.575744.5. Bathymetry data were obtained from GEBCO at https://doi.org/10.5285/1c44ce99-0a0d-5f4f-e063-7086abc0ea0f. Validation results are provided in the Datas S3-S4 and are also available in the DigitalCSIC repository at https://doi.org/10.20350/digitalCSIC/16668. The sources of the predator–prey interactions data used in this study are accessible through the DOIs listed in the Data S2.-- This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Bas, Maria; Ouled-Cheikh, Jazel; Fuster-Alonso, Alba; Julià Melis, Laura; March, David; Ramírez Benítez, Francisco; Cardona, Luis; Coll, Marta; Potential Spatial Mismatches Between Marine Predators and Their Prey in the Southern Hemisphere in Response to Climate Change; Global Change Biology 31(2): e70080 (2025), which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70080. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions."

Global change is rapidly reshaping species' habitat suitability ranges, hence leading to significant shifts in the distribution of marine life. Contrasting distributional responses among species can alter the spatial overlap between predators and prey, potentially disrupting trophic interactions and affecting food web dynamics. Here, we evaluate long-term changes in the spatial overlap of habitat suitability ranges for trophically related species, including crustaceans, fish, penguins, and pinnipeds across 12 Large Marine Ecosystems from the Southern Hemisphere, merged into three primary regions: South America, Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand. To this aim, we first use Boosted Regression Trees (BRTs) to hindcast and project species-specific changes in suitable habitat from 1850 to 2100 under two future climate scenarios: SSP1-2.6 (low climate forcing) and SSP5-8.5 (high climate forcing). We then analyze changes in species habitat suitability and potential predator–prey spatial overlaps. Findings reveal that marine species generally exhibit changes in their suitable habitats, with pronounced shifts towards higher latitudes under the SSP5-8.5 scenario. However, contrasting trends emerge among predators across functional groups and regions of South America, Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand. These variations highlight the need for species and regional-specific management responses. We also project contrasting spatial mismatches between predators and prey: predators experiencing declines in suitable habitat tend to exhibit greater overlap with their prey in future scenarios, whereas those with expanding suitable habitat show reduced spatial overlap with their prey. This study provides valuable insights that can inform spatial management strategies in response to climate change and illustrate how climate change may weaken species' ability to adapt to climate-driven environmental changes due to trophic disruptions

This work was supported by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and NextGenerationEU/PRTR, Grant no. FJC2020-043762-I to M.B; J.O. was supported by Universitat de Barcelona through the PREDOCS-UB grant (2021); A.F.-A. was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Grant no. PRE2021-099287 from the project ProOeans (PID2020-118097RB-I00); F.R. was supported by the Ramón y Cajal program (RYC2020-030078-I); D.M. was supported by the CIDEGENT program of the Generalitat Valenciana (CIDEGENT/2021/058); This research was also supported by the projects SOSPEN (PID2021-124831OA-I00), SEASentinels (CNS2022-135631) and ProOceans (PID2020-118097RB-I00). This research contributes to the objectives of Q-MARE (a PAGES working group). This work acknowledges the institutional support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S). This research is also part of the Integrated Marine Ecosystem Assessments (iMARES) research group funded by Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (Generalitat de Catalunya) Grant no. 2021 SGR 00435

Peer reviewed