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Abstract Protection from direct human impacts can safeguard marine life, yet ocean warming crosses marine protected area boundaries. Here, we test whether protection offers resilience to marine heatwaves from local to network scales. We examine 71,269 timeseries of population abundances for 2269 reef fish species surveyed in 357 protected versus 747 open sites worldwide. We quantify the stability of reef fish abundance from populations to metacommunities, considering responses of species and functional diversity including thermal affinity of different trophic groups. Overall, protection mitigates adverse effects of marine heatwaves on fish abundance, community stability, asynchronous fluctuations and functional richness. We find that local stability is positively related to distance from centers of high human density only in protected areas. We provide evidence that networks of protected areas have persistent reef fish communities in warming oceans by maintaining large populations and promoting stability at different levels of biological organization. 

Abstract As on land, oceans exhibit high temporal and spatial temperature variation. This “ocean weather” contributes to the physiological and ecological processes that ultimately determine the patterns of species distribution and abundance, yet is often unrecognized, especially in tropical oceans. Here, we tested the paradigm of temperature stability in shallow waters (<12.5 m) across different zones of latitude. We collated hundreds of in situ, high temporal-frequency ocean temperature time series globally to produce an intuitive measure of temperature variability, ranging in scale from quarter-diurnal to annual time spans. To estimate organismal sensitivity of ectotherms (i.e. microbes, algae, and animals whose body temperatures depend upon ocean temperature), we computed the corresponding range of biological rates (such as metabolic rate or photosynthesis) for each time span, assuming an exponential relationship. We found that subtropical regions had the broadest temperature ranges at time spans equal to or shorter than a month, while temperate and tropical systems both exhibited narrow (i.e. stable) short-term temperature range estimates. However, temperature-dependent biological rates in tropical regions displayed greater ranges than in temperate systems. Hence, our results suggest that tropical ectotherms may be relatively more sensitive to short-term thermal variability. We also highlight previously unexplained macroecological patterns that may be underpinned by short-term temperature variability. 

Abstract Frozen winters define life at high latitudes and altitudes. However, recent, rapid changes in winter conditions have highlighted our relatively poor understanding of ecosystem function in winter relative to other seasons. Winter ecological processes can affect reproduction, growth, survival, and fitness, whereas processes that occur during other seasons, such as summer production, mediate how organisms fare in winter. As interest grows in winter ecology, there is a need to clearly provide a thought-provoking framework for defining winter and the pathways through which it affects organisms. In the present article, we present nine maxims (concise expressions of a fundamentally held principle or truth) for winter ecology, drawing from the perspectives of scientists with diverse expertise. We describe winter as being frozen, cold, dark, snowy, less productive, variable, and deadly. Therefore, the implications of winter impacts on wildlife are striking for resource managers and conservation practitioners. Our final, overarching maxim, “winter is changing,” is a call to action to address the need for immediate study of the ecological implications of rapidly changing winters. 

ABSTRACT MotivationHere, we make available a second version of the BioTIME database, which compiles records of abundance estimates for species in sample events of ecological assemblages through time. The updated version expands version 1.0 of the database by doubling the number of studies and includes substantial additional curation to the taxonomic accuracy of the records, as well as the metadata. Moreover, we now provide an R package (BioTIMEr) to facilitate use of the database. Main Types of Variables IncludedThe database is composed of one main data table containing the abundance records and 11 metadata tables. The data are organised in a hierarchy of scales where 11,989,233 records are nested in 1,603,067 sample events, from 553,253 sampling locations, which are nested in 708 studies. A study is defined as a sampling methodology applied to an assemblage for a minimum of 2 years. Spatial Location and GrainSampling locations in BioTIME are distributed across the planet, including marine, terrestrial and freshwater realms. Spatial grain size and extent vary across studies depending on sampling methodology. We recommend gridding of sampling locations into areas of consistent size. Time Period and GrainThe earliest time series in BioTIME start in 1874, and the most recent records are from 2023. Temporal grain and duration vary across studies. We recommend doing sample‐level rarefaction to ensure consistent sampling effort through time before calculating any diversity metric. Major Taxa and Level of MeasurementThe database includes any eukaryotic taxa, with a combined total of 56,400 taxa. Software Formatcsv and. SQL.