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A pronounced environmental gradient runs from north to south along the southeastern Levant, driven by sediment and nutrient discharge downstream of the receding Nile Delta. We hypothesized that higher surface productivity near the Nile Delta would support an algae\u2010dominated epibenthic food web and richer fish assemblages at the southern sites. We surveyed epibenthic cover, habitat structure, and fish assemblages at five sites spanning ~160\u2009km of coastline within a shared 25\u201330\u2009m depth band between 2017 and 2022. Contrary to this hypothesis, our findings reveal a distinct coastal ecocline, a benthic shift from algae\u2010 to bryozoan\u2010dominated epibenthos that closely mirrored the depth\u2010related shift observed at the northern sites (between 10\u2009m and 45\u2009m). This benthic shift was coupled with reduced abundance of herbivorous and micro\u2010invertivorous fish and with significantly lower fish species richness and diversity at the southern sites, despite their higher structural complexity. Redundancy analysis showed that depth, latitude, visibility, and season together explained 55.5% of the variance in epibenthic community composition, while an analogous spatial model explained 20% of the variance in fish abundance. This benthic shift, associated with gradients in depth, latitude, sedimentation, and light attenuation, appears to be a major architect of fish community structure in this region, rather than structural complexity. This implies that the southern Levant may act not as a corridor but as a restrictive filter, trapping species between warming surface waters and a deep\u2010sea\u2010like habitat that lacks the conditions required to support higher trophic levels; the capacity of upper\u2010mesophotic reefs to serve as thermal refugia is not uniform across space.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1002\/ece3.74367","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,12]],"date-time":"2026-10-12T00:57:32Z","timestamp":1791766652000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Compromised Refugia: Latitudinal Gradients Mimic Depth and Constrain Subtropical Reef Habitats in the Nilotic Basin"],"prefix":"10.1002","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1790-7525","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anat","family":"Tsemel","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Kadas Nexus, Leon H. 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