Malin L. Pinsky’s research while affiliated with University of California, Santa Cruz and other places

What is this page?


This page lists works of an author who doesn't have a ResearchGate profile or hasn't added the works to their profile yet. It is automatically generated from public (personal) data to further our legitimate goal of comprehensive and accurate scientific recordkeeping. If you are this author and want this page removed, please let us know.

Publications (192)


Temporal dynamics of biotic homogenization and differentiation across marine fish communities
  • Preprint
  • File available

April 2025

·

86 Reads

Zoë Jean Kitchel

·

Aurore Maureaud

·

·

[...]

·

Malin Pinsky

Humans have transformed ecosystems through habitat modification, harvesting, species introduction, and climate change. Changes in species distribution and composition are often thought to induce biotic homogenization, defined as a decline in spatial beta diversity through time. However, it is unclear whether homogenization is common in ocean ecosystems and if changes in beta diversity exhibit linear or more complex dynamics. Here, we assessed patterns of homogenization or its converse (differentiation) across more than 175,000 samples of 2,006 demersal fish species from 34 regions spanning six decades and 20% of the planet’s continental shelf area. While ten regions (29%) recorded significant homogenization, eleven (32%) recorded significant differentiation. Non-monotonic temporal fluctuations in beta diversity occurred in 15 regions, highlighting complex dynamics missed by before-and-after snapshots that can drive spurious conclusions about trends in beta diversity. Fishing pressure and temperature helped explain variance in beta diversity across years and regions. However, the strength and direction of these effects differed by region. Here we showed that, despite intense anthropogenic impacts on the oceans, the majority of demersal marine fish communities do not follow the global homogenization paradigm common in other realms.

Download

Figure 3: Summer flounder dynamics over space and time in the study region from 1972-2016. Cells are color-coded by mean density in the survey, and summary statistics used to evaluate and validate models (the position of the range centroid and warm and cold edges) are plotted.
Dynamic range models improve the near-term forecast for a marine species on the move

March 2025

·

62 Reads

Population dynamic models are widely used to predict demography. However, they have rarely been extended to biogeographical applications despite widespread calls to do so. We developed a process-based dynamic range model (DRM) that estimated demographic rates and the effects of the environment on demographic rates to forecast species range shifts in response to temperature change. As a proof of concept, we fitted DRMs to historical observations of summer flounder (Paralichthys dentatus), a fish species in the Northwest Atlantic, and evaluated model skill at retrospective forecasting. The best DRMs outperformed a statistical species distribution model and a persistence forecast at predicting biogeographical dynamics across a decade. The DRM approach is general and can be applied to a wide range of species with historical observations across space and time. By explicitly modeling demographic processes and their relationship to climate, DRMs promise to substantially advance prediction of species on the move.






Records of species composition temporal turnover from around the world
a, Location of assemblage time series from BioTIME, including 3,159 on land, 38,451 in the ocean and 645 in freshwater. b,c, Comparison of temperature change at BioTIME locations and at randomly selected sites globally with equivalent sampling intervals and durations on continents (b) or in the ocean (c). Note that the x and y axes have been square-root transformed to facilitate visualization. d, Example of a turnover rate calculation (ordered beta regression slope in blue), based on 57 years of bird community sampling in Sweden³⁸. Dissimilarity varies between 0 and 1 and was measured with the replacement component of the incidence-based Jaccard index. Slope is shown with 95% CIs. e, Conceptual diagram of the statistical approach. The main hypothesis was that temporal turnover rates (slopes) differed across assemblages that experienced faster or slower rates of temperature change (Tchange). We tested Tchange as a continuous variable, although only two levels are shown in the diagram. The map in a was generated in R³⁹.
Species turnover rates were related to rates of warming and cooling
a, Turnover rate (change in dissimilarity per year) for studies in terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms. Dashed lines are the averages across studies in realms and the top horizontal lines indicate the 95% CIs for the averages. b, Marginal effects of absolute temperature change on the turnover rates with 95% CIs (lines and shading) for assemblages that experienced warming or cooling (colour). Translucent data points show individual time series with dot size scaled by duration. c, Marginal effects of average temperature on the sensitivity of the turnover rate to temperature change for assemblages that are warming or cooling (colour). Error bars show 95% CIs. Similar plots with downsampling are shown in Extended Data Fig. 4b,c, which highlight the uncertainty for freshwater ecosystems. The x and y axes in a and b have been square-root transformed to facilitate visualization.
Covariates associated with the sensitivity of turnover rates to temperature change in the marine and terrestrial realms
a,b, Turnover rates were more sensitive to changing temperatures when: environments had less microclimate availability (measured as the standard deviation of temperature within a 20-km radius, °C) (a) or human impacts were greater, particularly on land (low-to-high index from 0 to 10) (b). The heavy line is the mean and the shaded area represents the 95% CI.
Warming and cooling catalyse widespread temporal turnover in biodiversity

January 2025

·

1,098 Reads

·

1 Citation

Nature

Turnover in species composition through time is a dominant form of biodiversity change, which has profound effects on the functioning of ecological communities1, 2, 3–4. Turnover rates differ markedly among communities⁴, but the drivers of this variation across taxa and realms remain unknown. Here we analyse 42,255 time series of species composition from marine, terrestrial and freshwater assemblages, and show that temporal rates of turnover were consistently faster in locations that experienced faster temperature change, including both warming and cooling. In addition, assemblages with limited access to microclimate refugia or that faced stronger human impacts on land were especially responsive to temperature change, with up to 48% of species replaced per decade. These results reveal a widespread signal of vulnerability to continuing climate change and highlight which ecological communities are most sensitive, raising concerns about ecosystem integrity as climate change and other human impacts accelerate.


Why extreme events matter for species redistribution

January 2025

·

241 Reads

Climate change is altering species’ distributions globally. Increasing frequency of extreme weather and climate events (EWCEs), including heat waves, droughts, storms, floods, and fires, is one of the hallmarks of climate change. These events can trigger rapid shifts in species’ distributions by impacting dispersal, establishment, and survival of organisms. Despite species redistribution being widely studied in response to longer-term trends of climate change, few studies consider the contribution of EWCEs to range shifts. With EWCEs impacting ecologically, economically, and culturally important species, we call for integrating EWCEs into the study of biodiversity redistribution. Advances in data availability and statistical methods are improving our capacity to understand and integrate these complex processes into adaptive conservation management efforts and biodiversity assessments.


Fine resolution satellite sea surface temperatures capture the conditions experienced by corals at monthly but not daily timescales

January 2025

·

21 Reads

Coral Reefs

Water temperature is a strong driver of growth, survival, and local adaptation in corals, but our knowledge of the temperatures experienced by corals on reefs worldwide remains limited. While in situ temperature loggers can provide high quality data, they are relatively expensive to place and retrieve. Alternatively, remotely sensed sea surface temperature data are globally available but may be a biased representation of the temperatures experienced by corals. Here, we compared data from 314 temperature loggers on coral reefs to the ~ 1 km² resolution remotely sensed Multi-scale Ultra-high Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (MUR) product from NASA. We found good agreement (Pearson’s r = 0.95) between maximum monthly mean temperatures calculated from remote and in situ data, with 84% of temperatures within 0.5 °C of each other. However, remotely sensed temperature did not effectively capture sub-diel temperature fluctuations and the highest peak temperatures that may be most dangerous for corals. Predictions of in situ temperatures were significantly but weakly improved by a consideration of reef geomorphology. Ultimately, we found that remotely sensed temperatures can accurately represent the monthly conditions experienced by most corals but should be used with caution at finer temporal scales.


Temporal dynamics of biotic homogenization and differentiation across marine fish communities

January 2025

·

270 Reads

Humans have transformed ecosystems through habitat modification, harvesting, species introduction, and climate change. Changes in species distribution and composition are often thought to induce biotic homogenization, defined as a decline in spatial beta diversity through time. However, it is unclear whether homogenization is common in ocean ecosystems and if changes in beta diversity exhibit linear or more complex dynamics. Here, we assessed patterns of homogenization or its converse (differentiation) across more than 175,000 samples of 2,006 demersal fish species from 34 regions spanning six decades and 20% of the planet’s continental shelf area. While ten regions (29%) recorded significant homogenization, eleven (32%) recorded significant differentiation. Non-monotonic temporal fluctuations in beta diversity occurred in 15 regions, highlighting complex dynamics missed by before-and-after snapshots that can drive spurious conclusions about trends in beta diversity. Fishing pressure and temperature helped explain variance in beta diversity across years and regions. However, the strength and direction of these effects differed by region. Here we showed that, despite intense anthropogenic impacts on the oceans, the majority of demersal marine fish communities do not follow the global homogenization paradigm common in other realms.


Citations (67)


... That is not to say that these existing SST products are not profoundly useful and widely adopted. GHRSST, with its 1,000 m resolution has been found capable of acting as a proxy for in-situ loggers for deriving maximum monthly means over select coral reefs (Bos and Pinsky 2024). At ocean-scale, satellite-derived heat stress forecasts, such as that provided by NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW), predict, observe, and alert users globally to coral bleaching events (Liu et al. 2017(Liu et al. , 2018Skirving et al. 2020;Little et al. 2022). ...

Reference:

Coral reef thermal microclimates mapped from the International Space Station
Fine resolution satellite sea surface temperatures capture the conditions experienced by corals at monthly but not daily time scales.

... org). In her talk, she presented results from eco-evolutionary modeling that she and her collaborators performed to assess the adaptive capacity of corals and to identify the most effective conservation approaches for supporting the survival of coral reefs (Walsworth et al. 2019;McManus et al. 2021;Forrest et al. 2024). For coral reefs, conservation actions include the establishment of marine protected areas where local stressors, such as poor water quality or overfishing, are mitigated. ...

Marine spatial planning to enhance coral adaptive potential

... It is worth mentioning that in our research, the numbers of hybrid varieties included in the genetic diversity analysis in the four breeding stages were 7, 15, 15, and 32, and the numbers of their parental genotypes were 11, 21, 26, and 56, respectively. Since the population size was the mediating factor in many hypotheses aimed at explaining global patterns of genetic diversity [35], the difference in the numbers of hybrid varieties and their parents might be one of the reasons for the increase in genetic diversity. But this difference could not be simply attributed to the differences caused by biased sampling, and the difference in the samples was not the only reason for the change in the allele number; we thought the genetic diversity of the materials should be more important. ...

Global patterns of nuclear and mitochondrial genetic diversity in marine fishes

... Tropical species are expected to show particular sensitivity to climate change, as they typically live near their critical thermal maximum and show fitness declines under shifting climates 27 . However, temperature is not the only factor determining species distribution 28 and other climate variables, such as precipitation regimes or water balance, may also be closely related to species range shifts 28 . Our results support this, as the models showed that precipitation of driest quarter (BIO 17) and annual precipitation (BIO 12) are the main drivers of range shifts for toads. ...

Mechanisms, detection and impacts of species redistributions under climate change
  • Citing Article
  • April 2024

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment

... In response to climate change, monarchs may become non-migratory or locate to more northern overwintering sites (Crone & Schultz, 2021). Species may respond to habitat changes by shifting to new distributions in conjunction with phenotypic and genetic adaptations, adapting within their current range, or decreasing in isolated and increasingly contracting refugia, with different responses possible by population (Aitken et al., 2008;Comte et al., 2024;Davis & Shaw, 2001). ...

Bringing traits back into the equation: A roadmap to understand species redistribution
  • Citing Article
  • April 2024

Global Change Biology

... Aside from monitoring and enforcement challenges, there are also significant gaps in scientific knowledge about marine biodiversity in the waters of Southeast Asia, including the distribution, population status, and ecological roles of many species. 48 As accurate and comprehensive data is essential for monitoring, assessment, and informed decision-making, its lack can impede the development of informed conservation strategies and management practices in the region. For example, many countries are still in the process of developing the necessary capacity to address climatedriven impacts on marine ecosystems. ...

New framework reveals gaps in US ocean biodiversity protection

One Earth

... To separate these effects and investigate spatiotemporal variation in community change across real ecosystems, spatially extensive, long-term sampling data is required (Pinsky et al., 2013;Vaidyanathan, 2021). Fortunately, regulatory agencies around the world have conducted such sampling in the form of fisheries independent scientific bottom trawl surveys (SBTS's) for over 50 years (Maureaud et al., 2024). Although originally designed to estimate fish stocks and establish catch quotas over management units (Maureaud et al., 2024), data from SBTS programs have been successfully used in marine ecology studies given their systematic reporting of commercially significant and rare taxa. ...

FISHGLOB_data: an integrated dataset of fish biodiversity sampled with scientific bottom-trawl surveys

Scientific Data

... The empirical meta-analysis found that the temperature-sensitivity of oxygen tolerance was highly variable across taxa and could not be precisely predicted for unmeasured species from existing data. Moreover, the applicability of experimental findings to explain distributions in situ is limited , Bandara et al. 2023 owing to the wide range of physiological acclimations and potential for local adaptation. ...

The importance of oxygen for explaining rapid shifts in a marine fish
  • Citing Article
  • November 2023

Global Change Biology

... Additionally, while prioritizations of protected areas from multispecies genetic data may be feasible for certain areas that have, or will have, sufficiently dense spatial and taxonomic data coverage (e.g., the California Conservation Genomics Project https://www.ccgproject.org/), this level of data availability is rare (Paz-Vinas et al. 2023), and as our own data suggest, geographically restricted (Figure 1). A recent survey of publicly available nuclear genetic data reported that only 24% of global protected areas contained at least five genetically sampled local populations (Paz-Vinas et al. 2023). ...

Uneven genetic data limits biodiversity assessments in protected areas globally

... For species that primarily inhabit surface waters, the absence of deep-water thermal refuges during surface heatwaves is of concern, as these events create extreme conditions with no possibility for escape to cooler depths. It is also important to note that, while some studies in the oceans have shown that marine heatwaves can have a detrimental impact on the ecosystem 23 , others have not shown a dominant effect 29 . Thus, when anticipating the response of aquatic species to subsurface lake heatwaves, it is important to consider that not all species will respond in the same way and that single-species responses 5 do not suggest a net ecological effect. ...

Marine heatwaves are not a dominant driver of change in demersal fishes

Nature