Paper Reviewed
Duffy, J.E., Lefcheck, J.S., Stuart-Smith, R.D., Navarrete, S.A. and Edgar, G.J. 2016. Biodiversity enhances reef fish biomass and resistance to climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 113: 6230-6235.

Duffy et al. (2016) introduce their study of this important subject by noting that "marine fisheries provide a major global source of protein, feeding billions of people." But they state that these fisheries "face destabilization in many regions from overexploitation and climate change." And in light of these observations, they set about to see what could be done about this sorry state of affairs.

"Using the most comprehensive dataset of fish diversity and abundance, encompassing over 4,500 surveys from nearshore habitats around the world," as they describe it, the five scientists go on to demonstrate that "biodiversity is among the strongest predictors of reef fish community biomass, comparable in importance to global temperature gradients and human impacts." And they also report discovering that diverse fish communities are "more resistant to rising and variable temperature, suggesting that high biodiversity also buffers against changing climate."

Duffy et al. additionally make a point of noting that "biodiversity is equally and often more important than water quality, nutrient supply, and human influence in controlling the global distribution of reef fish biomass, and that the more diverse fish communities are more resilient to impacts of changing climate." Furthermore, and "because reef fish biomass provides an important protein source for many people, particularly in the developing world," they say their data suggest that "management to sustain reef fish diversity, or both species and functional types, will also promote higher productivity of fish biomass and higher resilience of that ecosystem service in the face of rising and more variable temperatures."