Up to a quarter of seaweed species in southern Australian waters could face extinction due to global warming.
New research suggests seaweed communities in the south are becoming more similar to former communities in the north, with several temperate species moving south.
The researchers studied a database of more than 20,000 herbarium records since the 1940s and found changes in seaweed communities in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. These changes were found to be consistent with rapid warming in past decades.
Many ocean fauna survive on seaweed and, as a result, the possible extinction of seaweed could have wide-ranging implications.
Read more at The University of Western Australia