Modeling habitat suitability for Trichiurus lepturus Linnaeus, 1758 under climate change scenarios using ensemble approaches
Downloads
The impact of climate change on fish distribution has drawn increasing attention worldwide. Studying habitat suitability trends of Trichiurus lepturus, a commercially valuable circum?global species, is significant for climate?adaptive fisheries management. Using an ensemble species distribution model with 11,632 occurrence records and six environmental predictors (Sea bottom temperature, Salinity, Current Velocity, Depth, Primary production, pH) from Bio?ORACLE (v3.0), we assessed global habitat suitability of T. lepturus under current (2010-2020) and future (2040-2050, 2090-2100) scenarios (SSP2?4.5 and SSP5?8.5). Ensemble Model performance was high (AUC = 0.964, TSS = 0.830). Primary production (39.0%), sea bottom temperature (32.3%), and pH (17.1%) were the most influential drivers. Currently, suitable habitat covers 8.80 million km², concentrated in the tropical/subtropical shelves of the western Pacific and Indian Oceans. Future projections show a slight contraction: total suitable habitat declines by 0.1-0.2% under SSP2?4.5 and by 1.4% under SSP5?8.5 by 2100. Paired t?tests on 20 ensemble layers showed no significant changes in total suitable area (P>0.05). Classifying habitat suitability into three quality classes (high, moderate, and low) shows that highly suitable areas remain largely stable (from 8.41 to 8.33 million km²), while moderate?suitability areas decrease by 15.4% and low?suitability areas increase correspondingly. Under the moderate SSP2?4.5 pathway, habitat quality remains stable throughout the century, whereas under the high-emission SSP5-8.5 pathway, the shift by 2100 indicates increased vulnerability of T. lepturus to future climate change. This study underscores how climate change affects species' habitat distributions and provides a scientific basis for future habitat protection.
Keywords: Species Distribution, Climate Change, Fisheries, Habitat, Ensemble Model
Downloads
Addo-Bediako A., Chown S.L., Gaston K.J. (2000). Thermal tolerance, climatic variability and latitude. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 267: 739-745.
Ahmadi A., Imanpour Namin J., Sharifian S., Daliri M. (2023). Habitat suitability projections for the black pomfret (Parastromateus niger) under climate change: an ensemble modeling approach. Iranian Journal of Ichthyology, 10: 215-224.
Aiello-Lammens M.E., Boria R.A., Radosavljevic A., Vilela B., Anderson R.P. (2015). spThin: An R package for spatial thinning of species occurrence records for use in ecological niche models. Ecography, 38: 541-545.
Allouche O., Tsoar A., Kadmon R. (2006). Assessing the accuracy of species distribution models: prevalence, kappa and the true skill statistic (TSS). Journal of Applied Ecology, 43: 1223-1232.
Apriliani I.M., Nurrahman Y.A., Dewanti L.P., Herawati H. (2018). Determination of potential fishing ground for hairtail (Trichiurus sp.) fishing based on chlorophyll-a distribution and sea surface temperature in Pangandaran waters, West Java, Indonesia. AACL Bioflux, 11: 1047-1054.
Araújo M.B., Anderson R.P., Barbosa A.M., Beale C.M., Dormann C.F., Early R., Rahbek C. (2019). Standards for distribution models in biodiversity assessments. Science Advances, 5: eaat4858.
Araújo M.B., New M. (2007). Ensemble forecasting of species distributions. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 22: 42-47.
Assis J., Fernandez Bejarano S.J., Salazar V.W., Schepers L., Gouvêa L., Fragkopoulou E., Leclercq F., Vanhoorne B., Tyberghein L., Serrão E.A. (2024). Bio-ORACLE v3.0. Pushing marine data layers to the CMIP6 Earth System Models of climate change research. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 33: e13813.
Bakun A., Black B.A., Bograd S.J., Garcia-Reyes M., Miller A.J., Rykaczewski R.R., Sydeman W.J. (2015). Anticipated effects of climate change on coastal upwelling ecosystems. Current Climate Change Reports, 1: 85-93.
Beaugrand G., Reid P.C., Ibanez F., Lindley J.A., Edwards M. (2002). Reorganization of North Atlantic marine copepod biodiversity and climate. Science, 296: 1692-1694.
Briscoe N.J., Elith J., Salguero-Gómez R., Lahoz-Monfort J.J., Camac J.S., Giljohann K.M., Holden M.H., Hradsky B.A., Kearney M.R., McMahon S.M., Phillips B.L., Regan T.J., Rhodes J.R., Vesk P.A., Wintle B.A., Yen J.D.L., Guillera-Arroita G. (2019). Forecasting species range dynamics with process-explicit models: matching methods to applications. Ecology Letters, 22: 1940-1956.
Brown C.J., O'Connor M.I., Poloczanska E.S., Schoeman D.S., Buckley L.B., Burrows M.T., Duarte C.M., Halpern B.S., Pandolfi J.M., Parmesan C., Richardson A.J. (2016). Ecological and methodological drivers of species' distribution and phenology responses to climate change. Global Change Biology, 22: 1548-1560.
Burrows M.T., Schoeman D.S., Buckley L.B., Moore P., Poloczanska E.S., Brander K.M., Brown C., Bruno J.F., Duarte C.M., Halpern B.S., Holding J., Kappel C.V., Kiessling W., O'Connor M.I., Pandolfi J.M., Parmesan C., Schwing F.B., Sydeman W.J., Richardson A.J. (2011). The pace of shifting climate in marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Science, 334: 652-655.
Carr M.E., Kearns E.J. (2003). Production regimes in four Eastern Boundary Current systems. Deep-Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography, 50: 3199-3221.
Chaikin S., Riva F., Marshall K.E., Lessard J.P., Belmaker J. (2024). Marine fishes experiencing high-velocity range shifts may not be climate change winners. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 8: 936-946.
Chamberlain S.A., Boettiger C. (2017). R, Python, and Ruby clients for GBIF species occurrence data. Available from: https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints. 3304v1. Retrieved 5/31/2017.
Champion C., Brodie S., Coleman M.A. (2021). Climate-driven range shifts are rapid yet variable among recreationally important coastal-pelagic fishes. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8: 622299.
Chavez F.P., Messie M. (2009). A comparison of Eastern Boundary upwelling Ecosystems. Progress in Oceanography, 83: 80-96.
Chen Y.F.L., Chen H.Y. (2006). Seasonal dynamics of primary and new production in the northern South China Sea: The significance of river discharge and nutrient advection. Deep-Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 53: 971-986.
Cheung W.W., Watson R., Pauly D. (2013). Signature of ocean warming in global fisheries catch. Nature, 497: 365-368.
Chiou W.D., Chen C.Y., Wang C.M., Chen C.T. (2006). Food and feeding habits of ribbonfish Trichiurus lepturus in coastal waters of south-western Taiwan. Fisheries Science, 72: 373-381.
Cloern J.E. (2001). Our evolving conceptual model of the coastal eutrophication problem. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 210: 223-253.
Dahms C., Killen S.S. (2023). Temperature change effects on marine fish range shifts: A meta-analysis of ecological and methodological predictors. Global Change Biology, 29: 4459-4479.
Daufresne M., Lengfellner K., Sommer U. (2009). Global warming benefits the small in aquatic ecosystems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106: 12788-12793.
De la Cruz-Torres J., Martínez-Pérez J., Franco-Lopez J., Ramírez-Villalobos A. (2014). Biological and ecological aspects of Trichiurus lepturus Linnaeus, 1758 (Perciformes: Trichiuridae) in Boca Del Rio, Veracruz, Mexico. American Journal of Environmental Sciences, 14: 1058-1066.
Doney S.C., Ruckelshaus M., Emmett Duffy J., Barry J.P., Chan F., English C.A., Galindo H.M., Grebmeier J.M., Hollowed A.B., Knowlton N., Polovina J. (2012). Climate change impacts on marine ecosystems. Annual Review of Marine Science, 4: 11-37.
Dulvy N.K., Rogers S.I., Jennings S., Stelzenmuller V., Dye S.R., Skjoldal H.R. (2008). Climate change and deepening of the North Sea fish assemblage: A biotic indicator of warming seas. Journal of Applied Ecology, 45: 1029-1039.
Elith J., Leathwick J.R. (2009). Species distribution models: ecological explanation and prediction across space and time. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 40: 677-697.
FAO (2017). FAO Global Capture Production database updated to 2015 - Summary information. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Available from: http://www.fao.org/3/I9540EN/i9540e n.pdf. Retrieved 4/25/2026.
FAO (2018). The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2018 – Meeting the sustainable development goals. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Available from: http://www.fao.org/3 /I9540EN/i9540en.pdf. Retrieved 4/25/2026.
Fielding A.H., Bell J.F. (1997). A review of methods for the assessment of prediction errors in conservation presence/absence models. Environmental Conservation, 24: 38-49.
Froese R., Pauly D. (2024). FishBase. Available from: www.fishbase.org. Retrieved 5/31/2024.
Gaines S.D., Costello C., Owashi B., Mangin T., Bone J., Molinos J.G., Burden M., Dennis H., Halpern B.S., Kappel C.V., et al. (2018). Improved fisheries management could offset many negative effects of climate change. Science Advances, 4: eaao1378.
Gattuso J.P., Magnan A., Billé R., Cheung W.W., Howes E.L., Joos F., Allemand D., Bopp L., Cooley S.R., Eakin C.M., Hoegh-Guldberg O. (2015). Contrasting futures for ocean and society from different anthropogenic CO2 emissions scenarios. Science, 349: aac4722.
Ghosh S., Rohit P., Muthurathinam A.M., Rajesh K.M., Koya M., Anulekshmi C., Nakhwa A.D., Surya S., Manas H.M., Roul S.K., Azeez P.A., Kumar R.V. (2024). Fishery and stock dynamics of ribbonfish Trichiurus lepturus (Linnaeus, 1758) in the Indian Exclusive Economic Zone. Indian Journal of Fisheries, 71: 8-17.
Guisan A., Thuiller W., Zimmermann N.E. (2017). Habitat suitability and distribution models: with applications in R. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 462 p.
Han H.B., Yang C., Jiang B.H., Shang C., Sun Y.Y., Zhao X.Y., Xiang D.L., Zhang H., Shi Y.C. (2023). Construction of chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus) fishing ground prediction model in the northwestern Pacific Ocean based on deep learning and marine environmental variables. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 193: 16.
He X., Luo Z., Zhao C., Huang L., Yan Y., Kang B. (2022). Species composition, growth, and trophic traits of hairtail (Trichiuridae), the most productive fish in Chinese marine fishery. Animals, 12: 3078.
Hijmans R.J., Phillips S., Leathwick J., Elith J. (2017). dismo: Species Distribution Modeling. R package version 1.1-4. Available from: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dismo. Retrieved 1/9/2017.
IPCC (2019). Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation. A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Field C.B., Barros V., Stocker T.F., Dahe Q., Dokken D.J., Ebi K.L., Mastrandrea M.D., Mach K.J., Plattner G.-K., Allen S.K., et al. (Eds.). Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY, USA. 582 p.
Lenoir J., Bertrand R., Comte L., Bourgeaud L., Hattab T., Murienne J., Grenouillet G. (2020). Species better track climate warming in the oceans than on land. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 4: 1044.
Levitus S., Antonov J.I., Boyer T.P., Stephens C. (2000). Warming of the world ocean. Science, 287: 2225-2229.
Liu D.Z., Zhao Q.L. (2019). Study on the spatial and temporal distribution of chlorophyll a concentration in Beibu gulf. Journal of Marine Sciences, 37: 95.
Mainali K.P., Warren D.L., Dhileepan K., McConnachie A., Strathie L., Hassan G., Karki D., Shrestha B.B., Parmesan C. (2015). Projecting future expansion of invasive species: comparing and improving methodologies for species distribution modeling. Global Change Biology, 21: 4464-4480.
Mamun M., Kim S., An K.-G. (2018). Distribution pattern prediction of an invasive alien species, largemouth bass, using a maximum entropy model (MaxEnt) in the Korean Peninsula. Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity, 11: 516-524.
Martins A.S., Haimovici M. (1997). Distribution, abundance and biological interactions of the cutlassfish Trichiurus lepturus in the southern Brazil subtropical convergence ecosystem. Fisheries Research, 30: 217-227.
Morand G., Joly A., Rouyer T., Lorieul T., Barde J. (2024). Predicting species distributions in the open ocean with convolutional neural networks. Peer Community Journal, 4: e93.
Naimi B., Hamm N.A.S., Groen T.A., Skidmore A.K., Toxopeus A.G. (2014). Where is positional uncertainty a problem for species distribution modelling? Ecography, 37: 191-203.
Nam J., Park C., Son J., Kwon O., Jeong M., Lee M. (2025). Ecological and anthropogenic drivers of hairtail catch distribution: A spatial analysis of the southern coastal waters of South Korea. Animals, 15: 2472.
Nneji I.C., Mambo W.W., Zheng Z., Oladipo S.O., Zhao H., Lu W., Nneji L.M., Lin J., Liu W. (2025). Predicting Habitat Suitability and Range Dynamics of Three Ecologically Important Fish in East Asian Waters Under Projected Climate Change. Biology, 14: 1476.
Ohlberger J. (2013). Climate warming and ectotherm body size – from individual physiology to community ecology. Functional Ecology, 27: 991-1001.
Payne M.R., Kudahl M., Engelhard G.H., Pinnegar J.K. (2021). Climate risk to European fisheries and coastal communities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118: e2018086118.
Pecl G.T., Araújo M.B., Bell J.D., Blanchard J., Bonebrake T.C., Chen I.-C., Clark T.D., Colwell R.K., Danielsen F., Evengård B., Falconi L., Ferrier S., Frusher S., Garcia R.A., Griffis R.B., Hobday A.J., Janion-Scheepers C., Jarzyna M.A., Jennings S., … Williams S.E. (2017). Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Science, 355: eaai9214.
Perry A.L., Low P.J., Ellis J.R., Reynolds J.D. (2005). Climate change and distribution shifts in marine fishes. Science, 308: 1912-1915.
Pinsky M.L., Eikeset A.M., McCauley D.J., Sunday J.M. (2019). Greater vulnerability to warming of marine versus terrestrial ectotherms. Nature, 569: 108-111.
Pinsky M.L., Worm B., Fogarty M.J., Sarmiento J.L., Levin S.A. (2013). Marine taxa track local climate velocities. Science, 341: 1239-1242.
Poloczanska E.S., Brown C.J., Sydeman W.J., Kiessling W., Schoeman D.S., Moore P.J., Brander K., Bruno J.F., Buckley L.B., Burrows M.T., Duarte C.M., Halpern B.S., Holding J., Kappel C.V., O'Connor M.I., Pandolfi J.M., Parmesan C., Schwing F., Richardson A.J. (2013). Global imprint of climate change on marine life. Nature Climate Change, 3: 919-925.
Prihatiningsih P., Tirtadanu T., Taufik M., Rosmiati R., Nurdin E., Panggabean A.S., Kembaren D.D., Nurulludin N., Chodrijah U., Mahulette R.T., Nugraha B. (2025). Unveiling the status of Trichiurus lepturus (Actinopterygii, Scombriformes, Trichiuridae) stocks in the southern Java waters, Indonesia: A biological and length-based assessment approach. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, 55: 31-43.
Provoost P., Bosch S. (2022). robis: R Client for the OBIS API. Available from: https://github.com/iobis/robis. Retrieved 5/31/2026.
Rathore M.K., Sharma L.K. (2023). Efficacy of species distribution models (SDMs) for ecological realms to ascertain biological conservation and practices. Biodiversity and Conservation, 32: 3053-3087.
Ren J., Liu Q., Ma Y., Ji Y., Xu B., Xue Y., Zhang C. (2025). Spatio temporal distribution of four trophically dependent fishery species in the northern China Seas under climate change. Biology, 14: 168.
Robinson L.M., Elith J., Hobday A.J., Pearson R.G., Kendall B.E., Possingham H.P., Richardson A.J. (2011). Pushing the limits in marine species distribution modelling: Lessons from the land present challenges and opportunities. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 20: 789-802.
Roessig J.M., Woodley C.M., Cech J.J., Hansen L.J. (2004). Effects of global climate change on marine and estuarine fishes and fisheries. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 14: 251-275.
Rohit P., Rajesh K.M., Sampathkumar G., Karamathulla P. (2015). Food and feeding of the ribbonfish Trichiurus lepturus Linnaeus off Karnataka, south-west coast of India. Indian Journal of Fisheries, 62: 58-63.
Romera R., Gaertner M.A., Sanchez E., Dominguez M., Gonzalez-Aleman J.J., Miglietta M.M. (2017). Climate change projections of medicanes with a large multi-model ensemble of regional climate models. Global and Planetary Change, 151: 134-143.
Shi Y.C., Kang B., Fan W., Xu L.L., Zhang S.M., Cui X.S., et al. (2023). Spatio-temporal variations in the potential habitat distribution of Pacific sardine (Sardinops sagax) in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Fishes, 8: 86.
Sun P., Chen Q., Fu C., Zhu W., Li J., Zhang C., Yu H., Sun R., Xu Y., Tian Y. (2020). Daily growth of young of the year largehead hairtail (Trichiurus japonicus) in relation to environmental variables in the East China Sea. Journal of Marine Systems, 201: 103243.
Sunday J.M., Bates A.E., Dulvy N.K. (2023). Thermal tolerance and the global redistribution of animals. Nature Climate Change, 13: 103-110.
Thuiller W., Georges D., Engler R., Breiner F. (2016). biomod2: Ensemble platform for species distribution modeling. R package version 3.3-7. Available from: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=biomod2. Retrieved 12/31/2016.
Thuiller W., Georges D., Gueguen M., Engler R., Breiner F., Lafourcade B., Patin R., Blancheteau H. (2025). biomod2: Ensemble Platform for Species Distribution Modeling. R package version 4.2-6-2. Available from: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=biomod2. Retrieved 5/31/2025.
Thuiller W., Guéguen M., Renaud J., Karger D.N., Zimmermann N.E. (2019). Uncertainty in ensembles of global biodiversity scenarios. Nature Communications, 10: 1446.
Tyberghein L., Verbruggen H., Pauly K., Troupin C., Mineur F., De Clerck O. (2012). Bio-ORACLE: a global environmental dataset for marine species distribution modelling. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 21: 272-281.
Van Vuuren D.P., Kriegler E., O’Neill B.C., Ebi K.L., Riahi K., Carter T.R., Edmonds J., Hallegatte S., Kram T., Mathur R. (2014). A new scenario framework for climate change research: Scenario matrix architecture. Climatic Change, 122: 373-386.
Wang D., Gouhier T.C., Menge B.A., Ganguly A.R. (2015). Intensification and spatial homogenization of coastal upwelling under climate change. Nature, 518: 390-394.
Xiong P.L., Xu Y.W., Sun M.S., Zhou X.X., Jiang P.W., Chen Z.Z., Fan J.T. (2023). The current and future seasonal geographic distribution of largehead hairtail Trichiurus japonicus in the Beibu Gulf, South China Sea. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9: 14.
Yin K. (2002). Monsoonal influence on seasonal variations in nutrients and phytoplankton biomass in coastal waters of Hong Kong in the vicinity of the Pearl River estuary. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 245: 111-122.
Zhang J., Li J., Zhang K., Xu Y., Xu S., Chen Z. (2024). Spatial and temporal distribution of habitat pattern of Trichiurus japonicus in the northern South China Sea under future climate scenarios. Fishes, 9: 488.
Zhang M., Wang X.H., Cai Y.C., Du F.Y., Sun D.R., Wang Y.Z., et al. (2022). Spatial aggregation and dispersion characteristics of Trichiurus haumela in the Beibu Gulf, northern South China Sea. Journal of Fishery Sciences of China, 29: 1647-1658.
Copyright (c) 2026 International Journal of Aquatic Biology
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
