Abstract

The world’s oceans are warming which could cause an existential threat to organisms that inhabit shallow marine waters. Our previous research has demonstrated that queen conch (Aliger gigas) are reproductively inactive in nearshore areas of the Florida Keys; yet, reproduction occurs normally in offshore, backreef habitats. There is scant evidence for anthropogenic contaminants or endocrine disrupting compounds as the cause of these reproductive anomalies, but our more recent work has implicated extreme water temperatures as a potential cause. Thus, we used the Florida Keys Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (FKEYS-HYCOM) to extract sea surface temperature (SST) data on a fine scale for the period 2004-2020. To quantitatively analyze the spatial and temporal components of these data, we used the Emerging Hot Spot Analysis tool in ArcPro 2.8. Mean SST and extreme temperatures (i.e., > 30oC) in the Florida Keys show statistically significant increasing trends. The Emerging Hot Spot Analyses showed extreme temperature areas to be clustered in the shallow nearshore waters of the Keys, but new hot spots emerged along the reef tract as well, especially in the Lower Keys and Marquesas regions. The Upper Keys was the only region that were not subject to extreme temperatures along the reef tract. If SST trends continue their current trajectory, queen conch in the breeding aggrega-tions located along the shallow waters of the reef tract could become negatively impacted like those nearshore. Should this occur, reproductive output and recruitment would be diminished with serious consequences for metapopulation persistence.

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