Marine communities provide critical ecosystem services such as seafood provisioning, which is largely the product of functional diversity. Evidence suggests that functional diversity is a positive driver of fish biomass, but a good understanding of this relationship is still missing. Meanwhile, fish communities suffer pervasive human impacts, particularly in the form of fishing and climate change. These stressors are affecting the Barents Sea, but no study has investigated how they affect provisioning directly and through functional diversity. Here, this gap is addressed by jointly investigating the relationships between fish functional diversity, seafood provisioning, climate change and fishing in the Barents Sea. State-of-the-art methodologies were used to summarize functional diversity into operable metrics and model these relationships. Results indicate that functional diversity was positively related to warming and independent from fishing, while biomass was positively linked to warming and fishing and negatively related to functional diversity. These findings partially contradict previous literature and may be explained by processes such as species dominance, communities’ mixing and long-lasting exploitation. In a region experiencing substantial pressures, this study contributes to the understanding of anthropogenic impacts on local ecosystems and their vital services.
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