Climate variability hypothesis is partially supported in thermal limits of juvenile Northwest Atlantic coastal fishes.

As ocean warming continues to impact marine species globally, there is a need to understand the mechanisms underlying shifts in abundance and distribution. There is growing evidence that upper and lower temperature tolerances rather than mean preferences explain range shifts, but the full thermal niche is unknown for many marine species and observational data are often ill-suited to estimate the upper and lower thermal tolerances. We quantified critical thermal maximum (CT ) and critical thermal minimum (CT ) using standard methods to quantify temperature limits and thermal ranges of 14 economically and ecologically important juvenile fish species on the US Atlantic coast.