Some Criteria for Ranking Species Importance for Study in the U.S. GLOBEC California Current Program

• Likely to be impacted under hypothetical climate change scenarios

• Economically or ecologically important, either as a dominant member of CCS communities or through interactions with other species

• Has larval planktonic stage or is holoplanktonic

• Evidence that life history variability is linked to environmental variability

• Widely distributed within CCS, providing opportunity for latitudinal comparisons

• Life-histories and/or ecological interactions representative of many other species

• Demonstrated evidence of long-term shifts in abundance. (CCS, other EBCs or in models)

• Distribution associated with physical features and/or faunal boundaries

• Analogous species occur in other ecosystems (EBCs, etc.)

• Has existing long-term record of abundance (e.g., CalCOFI or paleoecological)