A tiny fish takes on its predators—and wins, transforming the Baltic coast

The work also stands out because it documents such a widespread and lasting ecological shift, adds Steve Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. More typically, researchers have observed such shifts in a single location, often a lake, showing how dominance swings back and forth between two species as temperature changes or fishing becomes more intense, he says. The new results “show that regime shifts can spread among connected habitats and transform an entire coastline rather rapidly.”