New geographic boundaries of marine fishes - are we aware?

Abstract

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The boundaries for geographic distributions of species are being redesigned continuously, as referred by several authors. In recent years, tropical and sub-tropical fish species have been registered for the first time in the coast of Portugal. Climate change may be one of the main reasons for this, driving these species to migrate to places where previously the climate wasn’t warm enough for them. Another possible explanation for this lack of knowledge on the true geographic distribution range for some species may be simply the limited number of scientific studies on biogeography for some groups of organisms in some particular areas. This communication provides new information on biogeography for several species of fishes but also how this information is being collected and processed, and how useful it can be as a tool to help in decision making strategies for ocean conservation and environmental awareness.

Keywords

• Portugal
• fish
• biogeography
• conservation
• Climate chage
• Boundaries
• M@rBis
• new limits