Global maps of marine fish species habitat suitability and richness

This dataset contains (1) outputs of Species Distribution Models (SDMs) for marine fish and (2) estimation of species richness using those outputs. SDMs use correlative algorithms to link presences of species to the environment recorded in place and time of their observation, calculate their environmental niche, estimate the geographical location suitable for them (habitat suitability) and in fine their geographical distribution. Here, we downloaded presences of marine fish from two open source databases, GBIF and OBIS and 13 environmental predictors known to be relevant in fish ecology (list below). We used the CEPHALOPOD pipeline, a framework allowing the user the compute a lot of species at the same time, with comparable methods and a verification of quality of inputs and outputs at every steps (Schickele et al., 2025). 3,642 fish made it to the final step and have the habitat suitability estimated for 12 month + annual mean, 10 bootstrap to quantify uncertainty and x algorithms. Those estimation are available in the “L2_marine_fish_*.nc” files, organized by water column position (bathydemersal, bathypelagic, benthopelagic, demersal, pelagic-neritic, pelagic-oceanic, reef-associated). We then used their annual mean to estimate their actual geographic distribution by applying (1) a bathymetric filtration and (2) a cutting procedure which removes isolated patches of high suitability (i.e., potential distribution) with no recorded presences (i.e., considered to be outside of the species dispersion range). Those geographic distribution were then stacked to estimate global species richness of every fish and each water column position.