Temporal variability of neustonic ichthyoplankton assemblages of the eastern Pacific warm pool: Can community structure be linked to climate variability?

Considerable evidence exists, showing an accelerated warming trend on earth during the past 40–50 years, attributed mainly to anthropogenic factors. Much of this excess heat is stored in the world's oceans, likely resulting in increased environmental variability felt by marine ecosystems. The long-term effects of this phenomenon on oceanic tropical ecosystems are largely unknown, and our understanding of its effects could be facilitated by long-term studies of how species compositions change with time. Ichthyoplankton, in particular, can integrate physical, environmental and ecological factors making them excellent model taxa to address this question. While on eight (1987–1990, 1992 and 1998–2000) NOAA Fisheries cruises to the eastern Pacific warm pool, we characterized the thermal and phytoplankton pigment structure of the water column, as well as the neustonic ichthyoplankton community using CTD casts and Manta (surface) net tows. Over the 13-year period, 852 CTD and Manta tow stations were completed. We divided the study area into three regions based on regional oceanography, thermocline depth and productivity, as well as a longitudinal gradient in species composition among stations. We then analyzed temporal trends of ichthyoplankton species composition within each region by pooling stations by region and year and making pairwise comparisons of community similarity between all combinations of the eight cruises within each region. We also identified environment-specific species assemblages and station groupings using hierarchical clustering and non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (MDS). Our analyses revealed a longitudinal gradient in community structure and temporal stability of ichthyoplankton species composition. Over the 13 years ichthyoplankton assemblages in the two westernmost regions varied less than in the eastern region. MDS and cluster analyses identified five ichthyoplankton assemblages that corresponded to oceanographic habitats and a gradient in community composition. We hypothesize that the changes in thermocline depth during the El Niños of 1987–1988, 1997–1998 and the extended period of warmth during 1990–1994 altered productivity sufficiently to cause a shift in the abundances of foundation species of the upwelling systems of the eastern Pacific warm pool. Our study suggests that ichthyoplankton assemblages in oligotrophic waters are more resilient to changes in the thermocline than assemblages in upwelling regions; or that oligotrophic regions simply have less physical variation compared to upwelling regions.