About

Malin Pinsky is a professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research focuses on ecological and evolutionary processes, particularly in marine environments, including species distribution modeling, population genetics, and the impacts of climate change on marine communities. Pinsky's work involves engaging students in systems thinking and addressing issues related to marine biodiversity, fisheries, and conservation. His contributions include advancing understanding of community-climate disequilibrium, genetic diversity loss in marine tropics, and the socio-economic aspects of marine species and ecosystems.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Ecology
• Biology
• Fishery
• Environmental planning
• Genetics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Environmental science
• Environmental resource management
• Evolutionary biology
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Business
• Geography
• Economics
• Demography
• Computational biology
• Atmospheric sciences
• Oceanography
• Management
• Geology
• Climatology

Selected publications

• Genetic Diversity Impacts Climate‐Induced Species Range Shifts

  Ecology Letters · 2026-03-26

  articleOpen access

  Climate change threatens biodiversity when species cannot tolerate, adapt to, or track shifting environmental conditions to stay within their climatic niches. A major unresolved question is whether and how species' genetic diversity modulates these dynamics, buffering against range contractions or facilitating range expansions. To test this, we integrated the largest global databases of species range shifts and genetic diversity, encompassing 4673 range shift estimates for 1888 species with available genetic data, including insects, arachnids, birds, fish, and plants. We found that range shifting rates were significantly shaped by the interaction of genetic diversity and climate change velocity. Under rapid warming, species with higher genetic diversity exhibited reduced trailing edge contractions, likely reflecting enhanced evolutionary potential or reduced vulnerability to drift. Under moderate warming, species with higher genetic diversity shifted more rapidly at leading edges and range centroids, consistent with greater colonisation ability. Our study provides evidence that genetic diversity potentially enables persistence at the trailing edge and colonisation at the leading edge, with the magnitude of these effects varying depending on the velocity of climate change.

  PublisherDOI

• Linking Community‐Climate Disequilibrium to Ecosystem Function

  Ecology Letters · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Turnover in species composition often lags behind the pace of climate change, resulting in mismatches between climate and communities. However, the impact of these community-climate disequilibria on ecosystem functions is rarely considered, and current methods for measuring disequilibria assume that species ranges were, until recently, in equilibrium with climate. Here, we develop a simple theoretical model to address both of these problems by linking community-climate disequilibrium with ecosystem functioning. We show how disequilibrium can impair functioning in the near-term even when climate change is expected to enhance functioning in the long-term. Responses are most likely to change over time in communities where turnover is slow, the impact of disequilibrium counteracts the direct effects of climate on ecosystem function, and pre-existing disequilibrium is large. These findings emphasise the importance of precise and unbiased estimates of community-climate disequilibria for improving ecological forecasts. By fitting our model to time series of both climate and ecosystem function from a metacommunity simulation, we show the potential for community-climate disequilibrium to be inferred without direct knowledge about species' distributions or climatic tolerances. We end by outlining a research agenda to apply dynamic disequilibrium concepts and test novel hypotheses across diverse ecosystems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• fishglob/FishGlob_data: FishGlob_data 2.1

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-03-16

  otherOpen access

  Overview This version contains an updated Gulf of Mexico (gmex) dataset and fixes bugs in the gmex cleaning code New Data Additions Gulf of Mexico now has data through 2024 Improvements Fixed issues with Gulf of Mexico data merging and cleaning Bug Fixes Addresses gmex issue 46: BIOCODE table bug fixes for taxonomic errors Fixed gmex issue 56: duplicated rows even after cleaning. Also updated the compiled files. Fixed gmex issue 76: updated the summary pdf What's Changed Fix GMEX table merging and taxonomy by @mpinsky in https://github.com/fishglob/FishGlob_data/pull/80 Update README.md with use instructions by @mpinsky in https://github.com/fishglob/FishGlob_data/pull/79 Prep for new release with fixed GMEX table merging and taxonomy by @mpinsky in https://github.com/fishglob/FishGlob_data/pull/82 Full Changelog: https://github.com/fishglob/FishGlob_data/compare/v2.0.2...v2.1

  PublisherDOI

• Species range shifts often speed ahead of their modeled climatic niches

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2026-03-30 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Anticipating how species distributions will shift with climate change is key for biodiversity conservation and management. Commonly, species' range shifts are observed by analyzing changes in occurrence or abundance data through time, or predicted across different climate change scenarios by modeling species' climatic niches. However, it remains unclear how well these climate-based forecasts align with empirically documented range shifts from monitoring efforts. Here, we tested the congruence between modeled range shifts, predicted using climatic niche models, and documented range shifts, derived from empirical observations collected over recent decades, for more than 9,500 range shifts across over 3,500 marine and terrestrial species. We found that documented and modeled range shifts tend to align in latitudinal direction, with greater alignment for marine (76%) than terrestrial (56%) cases. However, even when the directions aligned, documented shifts exceeded modeled shifts in 62% of cases, nearly twice as often as they lagged behind (38%), and their median rates were four times faster than those of the modeled shifts. Our findings suggest that climate-based models can approximate observed range dynamics under specific conditions, particularly over long time periods and restricted spatial areas, when habitats remain well connected and under low climate fluctuations over time. These insights provide valuable guidance for both improving predictions and informing responses to climate-driven biodiversity redistribution.

  PublisherDOI

• Contrasting patterns of seascape genetics in <i>Acropora cf. tenuis</i> and their symbiotic algae

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-04-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Theory suggests that pairs of mutualist species will often co-disperse and share the same dispersal patterns, though the extent to which this happens remains unclear. Photosynthetic corals constitute an example of this dynamic, as they rely on algal symbionts to meet their energetic needs, yet many acquire their symbionts environmentally after their larval dispersal phase. Consequently, corals and their symbionts may exhibit similar or contrasting patterns of genetic variation across the seascape, with implications for their evolutionary and ecological processes. Here, we densely sample corals of the key reef-building taxon Acropora cf. tenuis and their algal symbionts across a reefscape in the central Philippines to examine genetic variation across space. Four distinct coral taxa show genetic evidence of long distance dispersal, including weak or absent isolation by distance signals and parent-offspring pairs at widely spaced sites. These coral taxa all host a single group of algal symbionts from the genus Cladocopium , which shows landscape genetic structure independent from its coral hosts. In fact, Cladocopium genetics vary with both latitude and depth, potentially indicating genome-wide local adaptation at a finer spatial scale than that seen in their hosts. Genetic variation at markedly different spatial scales between host and symbiont may be beneficial for hosts if these differences enable them to acquire symbionts adapted to their settlement environments.

  PublisherDOI

• Data from: Dissolved oxygen and metabolic parameters improve species distribution models for a marine predator

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-05-20

  otherOpen access

  Species distribute themselves in the environment to maximize fitness, within their physiological and ecological constraints. The influence of dissolved oxygen and temperature on habitat use in marine systems, as well as their interactive effects on metabolic activity, all considerably impact habitat availability. Yet, despite their importance, a species' physiology is rarely directly considered in species distribution models for marine species.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Genetic diversity impacts climate-induced species range shifts"

  2026-01-28

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• Data from: Dissolved oxygen and metabolic parameters improve species distribution models for a marine predator

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-05-20

  otherOpen access

  Species distribute themselves in the environment to maximize fitness, within their physiological and ecological constraints. The influence of dissolved oxygen and temperature on habitat use in marine systems, as well as their interactive effects on metabolic activity, all considerably impact habitat availability. Yet, despite their importance, a species' physiology is rarely directly considered in species distribution models for marine species.

  PublisherDOI

• Primary productivity declines when species composition and climate are mismatched

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-05-22

  articleOpen access

  Climate change drives shifts in species composition, but turnover in many communities lags behind the current pace of change. Anticipating the impact of the resulting community-climate disequilibria on ecosystem functioning is critical. Present-day communities may already be out of equilibrium with climate, providing an opportunity to estimate the effects of disequilibrium before they become more widespread. We analyzed plant community composition and function data from ~60,000 rangeland monitoring sites across the western US to measure how community-climate disequilibrium contributes to spatial and temporal variation in net primary productivity (NPP) - a key ecosystem function. We found that communities were already substantially out of equilibrium with climate and accounting for this disequilibrium helped explain patterns of NPP. Communities farthest from equilibrium were less productive than those that were closely matched with climate. Our findings suggest that future increases in community-climate disequilibrium may further impair ecosystem functioning.

  PublisherDOI

• fishglob/FishGlob_data: FishGlob_data 2.1

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-03-15

  otherOpen access

  Overview This version contains a major update to the Gulf of Mexico (gmex) data, including bug fixes and new data through 2024. Please see the issues tab and the news file for detailed information. New Data Additions Gulf of Mexico now has data through 2024 Improvements Fixed issues with Gulf of Mexico data merging and cleaning Bug Fixes Addresses gmex issue 46: BIOCODE table bug fixes for taxonomic errors Fixed gmex issue 56: duplicated rows even after cleaning Fixed gmex issue 76: updated the summary pdf

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Adaptations of fish and fishing communities to rapid climate change

  NSF · $1.1M · 2014–2019

• NSF Convergence Accelerator Track E: Regional Climate Change Projections to Enable Equitable Ocean Planning for the Blue Economy

  NSF · $750k · 2021–2023

• RAPID: Mega-typhoon impacts on the metapopulation resilience of coral reef fishes

  NSF · $93k · 2014–2016

Frequent coauthors

• James William Morley

  East Carolina University

  78 shared

• Thomas L. Frölicher

  University of Bern

  73 shared

• Chris Moore

  Queen's Medical Centre

  64 shared

• Eric Horsch

  64 shared

• Michael Kolian

  Environmental Protection Agency

  64 shared

• Brian P. Morrison

  64 shared

• Roger B. Griffis

  NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service

  64 shared

• Bastien Mérigot

  Marine Biodiversity Exploitation and Conservation

  38 shared

Labs

• Malin Pinsky LabPI

Awards & honors

• Population Ecology Most Cited Paper Award (2023)
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science…
• Best In-Person Talk, International Biogeography Society Meet…
• Earth Leadership Program Fellow (2022-2023)
• Ocean Award in Science, Finalist, Blue Marine Foundation and…