Latitudinal Gradients

### Latitudinal Gradients in Biological Responses

How are recruitment, retention/transport, predator/prey relations, and life history strategies of planktonic stages impacted by latitudinal variability in the large-scale atmospheric and oceanic forcing in EBC ecosystems?

How do differences in mesoscale activity in the four regions of the CCS affect the recruitment dynamics, vital rates, and life histories of resident marine animal populations?

- What forces maintain the physical boundaries between regions and determine their locations?

- How sharp are the bio-physical (including genetic) gradients across the boundaries between the present regions and what maintains those biological boundaries?

- What life history strategies result in increased zooplankton productivity and successful recruitment of fish and invertebrates in the different regions now and how will climate change impact presently successful strategies and populations?

Because large-scale forcing and mesoscale physical variability differ markedly between regions of the CCS, the response of marine organisms to this spatial variability provides a useful indicator of how physical and biological conditions at a single site will respond to changing climatic conditions.