Martin Edwards

• BSc, PhD
• Research fellow at Plymouth Marine Laboratory

A large scale analysis of sea surface temperature (SST) and climate variability over the North Atlantic and its interactions with plankton over the North East Atlantic was carried out to better understand what drives both temperature and species abundance. The spatio-temporal pattern of SST was found to correspond to known climate indices, namely t...

Populations may potentially respond to climate change in various ways including moving to new areas or alternatively staying where they are and adapting as conditions shift. Traditional laboratory and mesocosm experiments last days to weeks and thus only give a limited picture of thermal adaptation, whereas ocean warming occurring over decades allo...

One of the major challenges to understanding population changes in ecology for assessment purposes is the difficulty in evaluating the suitability of an area for a given species. Here we used a new simple approach able to faithfully predict through time the abundance of two key zooplanktonic species by focusing on the relationship between the speci...

Against the backdrop of warming of the Northern Hemisphere it has recently been acknowledged that North Atlantic temperature changes undergo considerable variability over multidecadal periods. The leading component of natural low-frequency temperature variability has been termed the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Presently, correlative st...

The abundance of large marine dinoflagellates has declined in the North Sea since 1958. Although hypotheses have been proposed to explain this diminution (increasing temperature and wind), the mechanisms behind this pattern have thus far remained elusive. In this article, we study the long‐term changes in dinoflagellate biomass and biodiversity in...

Significant phenological shifts induced by climate change are projected within the phytoplankton community. However, projections from current Earth System Models (ESMs) understandably rely on simplified community responses that do not consider evolutionary strategies manifested as various phenotypes and trait groups. Here, we use a species-based mo...

Plankton monitoring by microscopy offers a long-term ecological perspective of plankton communities, but different detection approaches are uniquely biased. Genetic identification of marine plankton has become standard but is still not used in routine monitoring. This study assesses the value that genetic methods bring to microscopic and flow cytom...

Plankton monitoring by microscopy offers long-term ecological perspective of plankton com-munities but different detection approaches are biased uniquely. Genetic identification of marine plankton has become standard but is still not used in routine monitoring. This study assessed the diversity of plankton taxa using 18S high throughput sequencing...

The North Atlantic Ocean is the most intense marine sink for anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO 2) in the world's oceans, showing high variability and substantial changes over recent decades. However, the contribution of biology to the variability and trend of this sink is poorly understood. Here we use in situ plankton measurements, alongside observ...

Plankton monitoring by microscopy offers long-term ecological perspective of plankton communities but is biased towards those organisms that can be distinguished using the microscope. Genetic identification of marine plankton has become standard but is still not used. This study is a comprehensive study genetically measured taxa in the Western Chan...

Diatoms are important contributors to marine primary production and the ocean carbon cycle. In the North Atlantic and its adjacent seas primary production is driven by diatoms that transfer a significant part of the produced energy to higher trophic levels and carbon to the deep ocean. Anthropogenic warming and climate variability will likely have...

Annual phytoplankton succession is a key ecological phenomenon that drives marine species’ life cycles and energy flows within marine ecosystems. Identifying processes that control annual succession is critical to anticipate climate-induced environmental perturbations of this phenomenon and the consequences upon ecosystem functioning. Here, we demo...

Poleward range shifts are a global-scale response to warming, but these vary greatly among taxa and are hard to predict for individual species, localized regions or over shorter (years to decadal) timescales. Moving poleward might be easier in the Arctic than in the Southern Ocean, where evidence for range shifts is sparse and contradictory. Here,...

Macroecological relationships provide insights into rules that govern ecological systems. Bergmann's rule posits that members of the same clade are larger at colder temperatures. Whether temperature drives this relationship is debated because several other potential drivers covary with temperature. We conducted a near‐global comparative analysis on...

In the North Atlantic, euphausiids (krill) form a major link between primary production and predators including commercially exploited fish. This basin is warming very rapidly, with species expected to shift northwards following their thermal tolerances. Here we show, however, that there has been a 50% decline in surface krill abundance over the la...

Calanoid copepods are key taxa in the North Sea as they are the main food source for many fish stocks, such as herring, mackerel and cod. In this study we use an individual-based model for Calanus finmarchicus embedded in the NORWegian ECOlogical Model system (NORWECOM) to investigate important population parameters such as biomass and abundance, d...

Plankton biodiversity is a key component of marine pelagic ecosystems. They are at the base of the food web, control the productivity of marine ecosystems, and provide many provisioning and regulating ecological services. It is therefore important to understand how plankton are organized in both space and time. Here, we use data of varying taxonomi...

This chapter focuses on the epipelagic zone, which comprises 71% of the planetary surface, where biological production, biogeochemical cycles, and marine food webs are maintained by the inhabiting planktonic organisms. The case studies highlighted in this chapter collectively indicate that there is substantial observational evidence that many pelag...

Annual plankton succession has been investigated for many decades with hypotheses ranging from abiotic to biotic mechanisms being proposed to explain these recurrent patterns. Here, using data collected by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey and models originating from the MacroEcological Theory on the Arrangement of Life, we investigate...

Despite their critical role as the main energy pathway between phytoplankton and fish, the functional complexity of zooplankton is typically poorly resolved in marine ecosystem models. Trait-based approaches—where zooplankton are represented with functional traits such as body size—could help improve the resolution of zooplankton in marine ecosyste...

In this paper we outline the stakeholder-led approaches in the development of biological data products to support effective conservation, management and policy development. The requirements of a broad range of stakeholders and iterative, structured processes framed the development of tools, models and maps that support the FAIR (Findable, Accessibl...

This paper analyses spatial and seasonal patterns for near-surface abundances of four Calanus species in the Northeast Atlantic based on monthly Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey data collected during 2008-2016. C. finmarchicus, C. helgolandicus, C. hyperboreus and C. glacialis represent different ecosystems, and water masses with differing...

Aim Phytoplankton form the basis of the marine food web and are responsible for approximately 50% of the world's photosynthesis. Changes to their ecology are, therefore, important: here, we examined seasonal patterns in ocean phytoplankton abundance for 45 taxa over 59 years collected from circa 410,000 km of line‐transect sampling at temperate lat...

Extensive changes in plankton ecosystems around the British Isles over the last 60 years, including production, biodiversity and species distributions, have had effects on fisheries production and other marine life. This has been mainly driven by climate variability and ocean warming. These changes include: • Extensive changes in the planktonic eco...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY • Human health can be affected by toxin-producing phytoplankton, pathogenic Vibrio species (bacteria) and noroviruses (NoV) in UK waters. • The influence of climate change on toxin-producing phytoplankton is complex. This can be difficult to distinguish from shorter-term weather events and larger-scale circulatory processes. Confi...

As ocean temperatures rise, species distributions are tracking towards historically cooler regions in line with their thermal affinity1,2. However, different responses of species to warming and changed species interactions make predicting biodiversity redistribution and relative abundance a challenge3,4. Here, we use three decades of fish and plank...

The ocean plays a vital role in the global climate system and biosphere, providing crucial resources for humanity including water, food, energy, and raw materials. There is a compelling need to develop an integrated basin-scale ocean observing system to support of ocean management. We articulate a vision for basin-scale ocean observing – A comprehe...

Plankton are the base of marine food webs, essential to sustaining fisheries and other marine life. Continuous Plankton Recorders (CPRs) have sampled plankton for decades in both hemispheres and several regional seas. CPR research has been integral to advancing understanding of plankton dynamics and informing policy and management decisions. We des...

Impermanence is an ecological principle¹ but there are times when changes occur nonlinearly as abrupt community shifts (ACSs) that transform the ecosystem state and the goods and services it provides². Here, we present a model based on niche theory³ to explain and predict ACSs at the global scale. We test our model using 14 multi-decadal time serie...

In the past, partitions of the global ocean have been commonly carried out using relatively few environmental or biological variables. Although such partitions are undoubtedly useful on a global scale, we show that, at a basin scale, the use of a large number of biological variables greatly improves the accuracy of a partition. We first determined...

Recognition of the threats to biodiversity and its importance to society has led to calls for globally coordinated sampling of trends in marine ecosystems. As a step to defining such efforts, we review current methods of collecting and managing marine biodiversity data. A fundamental component of marine biodiversity is knowing what, where, and when...

A thorough understanding of planktonic organisms is the first step towards a real appreciation of the diversity, biology, and ecological importance of marine life. A detailed knowledge of their distribution and community composition is particularly important since these organisms are often very delicate and sensitive to change, and can be used as e...

A thorough understanding of planktonic organisms is the first step towards a real appreciation of the diversity, biology, and ecological importance of marine life. A detailed knowledge of their distribution and community composition is particularly important since these organisms are often very delicate and sensitive to change, and can be used as e...

KEY HEADLINES • Toxin producing phytoplankton, pathogenic vibrios (bacteria commonly found in low salinity water) and noroviruses all have the potential to impact human health. • The relationship between climate change and toxin producing phytoplankton is complex. Considerable unknowns remain about how climate change will impact this part of the pl...

This chapter focuses on the epipelagic zone, which comprises 71% of the planetary surface, where biological production, biogeochemical cycles and marine food webs are maintained by the inhabiting planktonic organisms. The case studies highlighted in this chapter collectively indicate that there is substantial observational evidence that many pelagi...

Significance Long-term ecological and paleontological data analyses indicate climate change is having an impact on marine eukaryotic communities. However, little is known about effects of global warming on marine prokaryotes, which are, by far, the largest living biomass in world oceans. Here, we report, for the first time to our knowledge, that a...

Differences in phenological responses to climate change among species can desynchronise ecological interactions and thereby threaten ecosystem function. To assess these threats, we must quantify the relative impact of climate change on species at different trophic levels. Here, we apply a Climate Sensitivity Profile approach to 10,003 terrestrial a...

The process of ocean acidification is now relatively well-documented at the global scale as a long-term trend in the open ocean. However, short-term and spatial variability can be high. New datasets made available since Charting Progress 2 make it possible to greatly improve the characterisation of CO2 and ocean acidification in UK waters.

Reliable statements about variability and change in marine ecosystems and their underlying causes are needed to report on their status and to guide management. Here we use the Framework on Ocean Observing (FOO) to begin developing ecosystem Essential Ocean Variables (eEOVs) for the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS). An eEOV is a defined biolog...

After flourishing during the second half of the twentieth century, many North Sea seabird populations are now in decline. Much evidence is accumulating that climate change is driving these negative trends in growth rate. Climate-driven changes in the physical environment may affect seabirds both directly and indirectly. Direct impacts such as incre...

Many studies have implied significant effects of global climate change on marine life. Setting these alterations into the context of historical natural change has not been attempted so far, however. Here, using a theoretical framework, we estimate the sensitivity of marine pelagic biodiversity to temperature change and evaluate its past (mid-Plioce...

Changes in the spatial distribution of plankton populations are thought to have a profound effect on the oceanic ecosystem across all levels. This study aims to address how the spatial distribution of different plankton assemblages has changed over a multidecadal period. The multivariate structure on the CPR dataset is analysed using a technique ca...

Understanding marine regime shifts is important not only for ecology but also for developing marine management that assures the provision of ecosystem services to humanity. While regime shift theory is well developed, there is still no common understanding on drivers, mechanisms and characteristic of abrupt changes in real marine ecosystems. Based...

Sudden, dramatic, long-lasting shifts in ecosystem structure and function have been increasingly documented in multiple, diverse marine ecosystems around the globe [[1][1]–[21][2]]. Such regime shifts can be explained with theory on nonlinear systems crossing critical thresholds [[2][3],[22][4]].

Regime shifts are characterized by sudden, substantial and temporally persistent changes in the state of an ecosystem. They involve major biological modifications and often have important implications for exploited living resources. In this study, we examine whether regime shifts observed in 11 marine systems from two oceans and three regional seas...

Pelagic fishes are among the most ecologically and economically important fish species in European seas. In principle, these pelagic fishes have potential to demonstrate rapid abundance and distribution shifts in response to climatic variability due to their high adult motility, planktonic larval stages, and low dependence on benthic habitat for fo...

Global warming is now unequivocal, and studies suggest it has started to influence natural systems, including the oceans. Here, we quantify plankton changes in the North Sea for the period 1958 to 2007 using an approach we call Multi-Scale Multivariate Split Moving Window (MMS-SMW) analysis that we apply to 5 groups: (1) diatoms, (2) dinoflagellate...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Major changes have taken place in both the plant (phyto-) and animal (zoo-) plankton of the seas around the British Isles over the last few decades. They include: • There have been extensive changes in the planktonic ecosystem in terms of plankton production, biodiversity, species distribution which has had effects other marine li...

The CPR survey records over 500 taxonomic entities and although the number of fish larvae on each sample is counted, they are not routinely identified to species or taxonomic group. The fish larvae project was an ambitious study to identify the fish larvae and transfer the results to a database incorporating the data from an earlier CPR Fish Atlas...

Major changes have taken place in both the plant (phyto-) and animal (zoo-) plankton of the seas around the British Isles over the last few decades. They include: • There have been extensive changes in the planktonic ecosystem in terms of plankton production, biodiversity, species distribution which has had effects other marine life. • In the North...

Climate change has profoundly altered the structure and biodiversity of marine ecosystems worldwide, and for many upper-trophic-level predators changes in lower-trophic-level prey has been the main driver of this alteration. To better understand the nature of marine ecosystem response to global change requires detailed knowledge of predator-prey dy...

Lynam, C. P., Halliday, N. C., Höffle, H., Wright, P. J., van Damme, C. J. G., Edwards, M., and Pitois, S. 2013. Spatial patterns and trends in abundance of larval sandeels in the North Sea: 1950–2005 – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70: 540–553. Early recruitment indices based on larval fish data from the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) have t...

Long-term changes in Calanus spp abundance in the North East Atlantic. a. Spatial distribution of eigenvector 1 and First Principal Component time-series corresponding with eigenvector 1 for Calanus spp. abundance in the North East Atlantic from 1948. b. Spatial distribution of eigenvector 2 for Calanus spp. abundance in the North East Atlantic fro...

Long-term changes in Phytoplankton Colour in the North East Atlantic. a. Spatial distribution of eigenvector 1 and First Principal Component time-series corresponding with eigenvector 1 for phytoplankton colour in the North East Atlantic from 1948. b. Spatial distribution of eigenvector 2 for phytoplankton colour in the North East Atlantic from 194...

Over the last few decades, global warming has accelerated both the rate and magnitude of changes observed in many functional units of the Earth System. In this context, plankton are sentinel organisms because they are sensitive to subtle levels of changes in temperature and might help in identifying the current effects of climate change on pelagic...

Scientists should ensure that high quality research information is readily available on the Internet so society is not dependant on less authoritative sources. Many scientific projects and initiatives publish information on species and biodiversity on the World Wide Web without users needing to pay for it. However, these resources often stagnate wh...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY High biomass Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) such as Karenia mikimotoi and shellfish toxin producing HAB species continue to be observed in UK and Republic of Ireland waters. Regional differences continue to be seen in the distribution of HABs in UK and RoI waters with impacts mainly observed in the south and west coast of Ireland and...

The phytoplankton colour index (PCI) of the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey is an in situ measure of ocean colour, which is considered a proxy of the phytoplankton biomass. PCI has been extensively used to describe the major spatiotemporal patterns of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic Ocean and North Sea since 1931. Regardless of its wi...

The global increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is potentially threatening marine biodiversity in two ways. First, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere are causing global warming1. Second, carbon dioxide is altering sea water chemistry, making the ocean more acidic2. Although temperature has a car...

Climate change has had profound effects upon marine ecosystems, impacting across all trophic levels from plankton to apex predators. Determining the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems requires understanding the direct effects on all trophic levels as well as indirect effects mediated by trophic coupling. The aim of this study was to inv...

Correlation matrix (Pearson's coefficient) between covariates. Significance is indicate as follow: pvalue<0.001 ***, pvalue,<0.01**, pvalue<0.05* SNAO: spring North Atlantic Oscillation index; WNAO: winter North Atlantic Oscillation index; SSST: spring Sea Surface Temperature; WSST: winter Sea Surface Temperature; Small cop: small copepods (<2 mm);...

Zooplankton taxa used in the study. (DOCX)