Data from: Limited scope for latitudinal extension of reef corals

An analysis of present-day global depth distributions of reef-building corals and underlying environmental drivers contradicts a commonly held belief that ocean warming will promote tropical coral expansion into temperate latitudes. Using a global data set of a major group of reef corals, we found that corals were confined to shallower depths at higher latitudes (up to 0.6 meters of predicted shallowing per additional degree of latitude). Latitudinal attenuation of the most important driver of this phenomenon—the dose of photosynthetically available radiation over winter—would severely constrain latitudinal coral range extension in response to ocean warming. Latitudinal gradients in species richness for the group also suggest that higher winter irradiance at depth in low latitudes allowed a deep-water fauna that was not viable at higher latitudes.本研究针对当前全球造礁珊瑚（reef-building corals）的深度分布格局及其潜在环境驱动因子展开分析，驳斥了一种广为流传的认知：海洋变暖将推动热带珊瑚向温带纬度扩张。我们基于涵盖主要造礁珊瑚类群的全球数据集开展研究，结果显示，纬度越高的海域，珊瑚栖息的深度越浅——每增加1个纬度，预测的栖息深度将变浅至多0.6米。驱动该现象的最核心因子——冬季光合有效辐射（photosynthetically available radiation）剂量随纬度升高而衰减，这将严重限制珊瑚在海洋变暖背景下向高纬度的分布范围扩张。该类珊瑚的物种丰富度纬度梯度也表明，低纬度海域深层水体中更高的冬季辐照度，孕育了在高纬度海域无法存活的深海水生动物群。