Université de Fribourg

Forecasted coral reef decline in marine biodiversity hotspots under climate change

Descombes, Patrice ; Wisz, Mary S. ; Leprieur, Fabien ; Parravicini, Valerianio ; Heine, Christian ; Olsen, Steffen M. ; Swingedouw, Didier ; Kulbicki, Michel ; Mouillot, David ; Pellissier, Loïc

In: Global Change Biology, 2015, vol. 21, no. 7, p. 2479–2487

Coral bleaching events threaten coral reef habitats globally and cause severe declines of local biodiversity and productivity. Related to high sea surface temperatures (SST), bleaching events are expected to increase as a consequence of future global warming. However, response to climate change is still uncertain as future low-latitude climatic conditions have no present-day analogue. Sea surface...

Université de Fribourg

Historical and contemporary determinants of global phylogenetic structure in tropical reef fish faunas

Leprieur, Fabien ; Colosio, Simona ; Descombes, Patrice ; Parravicini, Valeriano ; Kulbicki, Michel ; Cowman, Peter F. ; Bellwood, David R. ; Mouillot, David ; Pellissier, Loïc

In: Ecography, 2016, vol. 39, no. 9, p. 825–835

Identifying the main determinants of tropical marine biodiversity is essential for devising appropriate conservation measures mitigating the ongoing degradation of coral reef habitats. Based on a gridded distribution database and phylogenetic information, we compared the phylogenetic structure of assemblages for three tropical reef fish families (Labridae: wrasses, Pomacentridae: damselfishes...

Université de Fribourg

Plate tectonics drive tropical reef biodiversity dynamics

Leprieur, Fabien ; Descombes, Patrice ; Gaboriau, Théo ; Cowman, Peter F. ; Parravicini, Valeriano ; Kulbicki, Michel ; Melián, Carlos J. ; Santana, Charles N. de ; Heine, Christian ; Mouillot, David ; Bellwood, David R. ; Pellissier, Loïc

In: Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, p. 11461

The Cretaceous breakup of Gondwana strongly modified the global distribution of shallow tropical seas reshaping the geographic configuration of marine basins. However, the links between tropical reef availability, plate tectonic processes and marine biodiversity distribution patterns are still unknown. Here, we show that a spatial diversification model constrained by absolute plate motions...

Université de Fribourg

Quaternary coral reef refugia preserved fish diversity

Pellissier, Loïc ; Leprieur, Fabien ; Parravicini, Valeriano ; Cowman, Peter F. ; Kulbicki, Michel ; Litsios, Glenn ; Olsen, Steffen M. ; Wisz, Mary S. ; Bellwood, David R. ; Mouillot, David

In: Science, 2014, vol. 344, no. 6187, p. 1016–1019

The most prominent pattern in global marine biogeography is the biodiversity peak in the Indo-Australian Archipelago. Yet the processes that underpin this pattern are still actively debated. By reconstructing global marine paleoenvironments over the past 3 million years on the basis of sediment cores, we assessed the extent to which Quaternary climate fluctuations can explain global variation in...

Université de Fribourg

Responses of coral reef fishes to past climate changes are related to life‐history traits

Ottimofiore, Eduardo ; Albouy, Camille ; Leprieur, Fabien ; Descombes, Patrice ; Kulbicki, Michel ; Mouillot, David ; Parravicini, Valeriano ; Pellissier, Loïc

In: Ecology and Evolution, 2017, vol. 7, no. 6, p. 1996–2005

Coral reefs and their associated fauna are largely impacted by ongoing climate change. Unravelling species responses to past climatic variations might provide clues on the consequence of ongoing changes. Here, we tested the relationship between changes in sea surface temperature and sea levels during the Quaternary and present-day distributions of coral reef fish species. We investigated...