Idea Paper: Tracking the distribution of accretive reef communities across the Kuroshio region

In line with contemporary changes in oceanic conditions, reef communities could be declining at the equator and expanding polewards, having previously happened in the past. Yet, some tropical organisms are now decimated at their distributional cores and observed beyond their inferred range limits. However, it remains unclear if this is happening at the community scale, especially due to the challenges of collecting quantitative and comparable data across latitudes. Here, we propose that monitoring sentinel plots via photogrammetry could help to assess abiding changes in benthic communities and trajectories of reef‐building populations across the Kuroshio region. We think that as oceans are becoming warmer, accretive reef communities may shift their distribution northwards which may be primarily due to a change in the relative biomass‐abundance of resident taxa. Consistent trends among latitudes will resolve the possibility of contraction or expansion of accretive reef communities, providing further insight into the variety of responses and dynamics observed across latitudes in the context of the Anthropocene. In line with contemporary changes in oceanic conditions, accretive reef communities could be declining at the equator and expanding polewards. Here, we propose that monitoring sentinel plots via photogrammetry could help to assess abiding changes in benthic communities and appreciate the possibility of their distributional shift across the Kuroshio region.