The temporal and spatial resilience of abundance patterns of assemblages of organisms inhabiting transition zones between Arctic and boreal regions is an issue of concern in relation to climate change. The recognition that baseline information spanning such transition zones is required to facilitate future monitoring and assessments of temporal dynamics provided the motivation for the present study. ...

This paper provides the first assessment of the functional diversity (FD) of the Barents Sea fish community. FD is recognized as an important driver of ecosystem functions and, thus, governs the adaptability of ecosystems in the face of disturbance. We integrate ecosystem survey data with an extensive trait matrix and show that fish FD displayed large spatial variation. The study period (2004 to ...

Biogeographical patterns have an ecological basis, but few empirical studies possess the necessary scale and resolution relevant for investigation. The Barents Sea shelf provides an ideal study area, as it is a transition area between Atlantic and Arctic regions, and is sampled by a comprehensive survey of all major functional groups. We studied spatial variation in species composition of demersal ...

<ol> <li>Climate change is commonly associated with many species redistributions and the influence of other factors may be marginalized, especially in the rapidly warming Arctic.</li> <li>The Barents Sea, a high latitude large marine ecosystem in the Northeast Atlantic has experienced above‐average temperatures since the mid‐2000s with divergent bottom temperature trends at subregional ...