Investigating the effect of environmental drivers on phenology
Temperature is an important factor of fish reproduction (Huret et al., 2018). Other covariates may also strongly affect the timing of reproduction. Especially for species such as sea bass that have part of their life cycle in the pelagic realm. Other factors such as the salinity or concentration in chlorophyll A could strongly affect reproduction timing. Literature does not explicitly mention any clear threshold for these covariates and in that case more extensive field sampling would be required to identify the determinant of reproduction and include these in our approach - see for instance Planque et al., (2011).
Furthermore, it is expected that in a changing environment, the time span of reproduction will shift following temperatures. Some results already illustrate such phenomenon for sole in the North Sea, the English Sea and the North East Channel (Fincham et al., 2013). We consider our approach as an interesting tooI to assess the effect of climate change on fish phenology in order to preserve fish essential habitats and ensure the renewal of marine resources in a context of rapid environmental changes.