Estimating Extinction Risk from Climate Change

2022 ◽  
pp. 323-339
Author(s):  
Lee Hannah
Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Mohammed A. Dakhil ◽  
Marwa Waseem A. Halmy ◽  
Walaa A. Hassan ◽  
Ali El-Keblawy ◽  
Kaiwen Pan ◽  
...  

Climate change is an important driver of biodiversity loss and extinction of endemic montane species. In China, three endemic Juniperus spp. (Juniperuspingii var. pingii, J.tibetica, and J.komarovii) are threatened and subjected to the risk of extinction. This study aimed to predict the potential distribution of these three Juniperus species under climate change and dispersal scenarios, to identify critical drivers explaining their potential distributions, to assess the extinction risk by estimating the loss percentage in their area of occupancy (AOO), and to identify priority areas for their conservation in China. We used ensemble modeling to evaluate the impact of climate change and project AOO. Our results revealed that the projected AOOs followed a similar trend in the three Juniperus species, which predicted an entire loss of their suitable habitats under both climate and dispersal scenarios. Temperature annual range and isothermality were the most critical key variables explaining the potential distribution of these three Juniperus species; they contribute by 16–56.1% and 20.4–38.3%, respectively. Accounting for the use of different thresholds provides a balanced approach for species distribution models’ applications in conservation assessment when the goal is to assess potential climatic suitability in new geographical areas. Therefore, south Sichuan and north Yunnan could be considered important priority conservation areas for in situ conservation and search for unknown populations of these three Juniperus species.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julián A. Velasco ◽  
Francisco Estrada ◽  
Oscar Calderón-Bustamante ◽  
Didier Swingedouw ◽  
Carolina Ureta ◽  
...  

AbstractImpacts on ecosystems and biodiversity are a prominent area of research in climate change. However, little is known about the effects of abrupt climate change and climate catastrophes on them. The probability of occurrence of such events is largely unknown but the associated risks could be large enough to influence global climate policy. Amphibians are indicators of ecosystems’ health and particularly sensitive to novel climate conditions. Using state-of-the-art climate model simulations, we present a global assessment of the effects of unabated global warming and a collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) on the distribution of 2509 amphibian species across six biogeographical realms and extinction risk categories. Global warming impacts are severe and strongly enhanced by additional and substantial AMOC weakening, showing tipping point behavior for many amphibian species. Further declines in climatically suitable areas are projected across multiple clades, and biogeographical regions. Species loss in regional assemblages is extensive across regions, with Neotropical, Nearctic and Palearctic regions being most affected. Results underline the need to expand existing knowledge about the consequences of climate catastrophes on human and natural systems to properly assess the risks of unabated warming and the benefits of active mitigation strategies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 267
Author(s):  
Lesley Hughes

‘The Greenhouse Effect and Nature Reserves’ by Robert Peters and Joan Darling, published in the journal Bioscience more than 30 years ago, was a ground-breaking synthesis. Drawing on paleoecology, community ecology and biogeography, the review laid out many concepts about species vulnerability to climate change that have become central tenets of research on climate change adaptation in natural ecosystems. Remarkably, the paper also provided a clear and logical framework for flexible, forward-thinking and interventionist management action, including recommendations about the design of protected areas, and the need for species translocation to reduce extinction risk. Reflecting on the legacy of this paper, it is clear that the uptake of such approaches over the intervening decades has been extremely slow, representing many lost opportunities to reduce species vulnerability to rapid environmental change. This paper is a tribute to the prescience of Peters and Darling, and a call to revisit their farsighted advice to meet conservation challenges that continue to accelerate.


2016 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.L. Kubisch ◽  
V. Corbalán ◽  
N.R. Ibargüengoytía ◽  
B. Sinervo

Recently, Sinervo et al. (2010, Science, 328: 894–899) reported declines of lizard biodiversity due to local warming trends and altered thermal niches. Herein, we applied the Sinervo et al. (2010) physiological model to predict the local extinction risk of three species of lizard from Patagonia. Whereas the previous model used a single equation (for the extinctions of Blue Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus serrifer Cope, 1866) in the Yucatan Peninsula) relating environmental temperatures (Te) to hours of restriction (i.e., the period when lizards are forced into retreat sites because environmental temperatures are too high), we measured habitat-specific equations for the Te values of each species. We analyzed the vulnerability of Darwin’s Ground Gecko (Homonota darwinii Boulenger, 1885), Bariloche Lizard (Liolaemus pictus (Duméril and Bibron, 1837)), and Mountain Slope Lizard (Liolaemus elongatus Koslowsky, 1896) to climate change considering thermal physiological constraints on activity during the reproductive period. While Sinervo et al. (2010) predicted that the Phyllodactylidae family will not suffer from impacts of climate change, our physiological model predicted that 20% of the H. darwinii populations could become extinct by 2080. The physiological model also predicted that 15% of L. pictus populations and 26.5% of L. elongatus populations could become extinct by 2080. The most vulnerable populations are those located near the northern and eastern boundaries of their distributions.


PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e7333 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Maria Cardoso da Silva ◽  
Alessandro Rapini ◽  
Luis Cláudio F. Barbosa ◽  
Roger R. Torres

In a world where changes in land cover and climate happen faster than ever due to the expansion of human activities, narrowly distributed species are predicted to be the first to go extinct. Studies projecting species extinction in tropical regions consider either habitat loss or climate change as drivers of biodiversity loss but rarely evaluate them together. Here, the contribution of these two factors to the extinction risk of narrowly distributed species (with ranges smaller than 10,000 km2) of seed plants endemic to a fifth-order watershed in Brazil (microendemics) is assessed. We estimated the Regional Climate Change Index (RCCI) of these watersheds (areas with microendemics) and projected three scenarios of land use up to the year 2100 based on the average annual rates of habitat loss in these watersheds from 2000 to 2014. These scenarios correspond to immediate conservation action (scenario 1), long-term conservation action (scenario 2), and no conservation action (scenario 3). In each scenario, areas with microendemics were classified into four classes: (1) areas with low risk, (2) areas threatened by habitat loss, (3) areas threatened by climate change, and (4) areas threatened by climate change and habitat loss. We found 2,354 microendemic species of seed plants in 776 areas that altogether cover 17.5% of Brazil. Almost 70% (1,597) of these species are projected to be under high extinction risk by the end of the century due to habitat loss, climate change, or both, assuming that these areas will not lose habitat in the future due to land use. However, if habitat loss in these areas continues at the prevailing annual rates, the number of threatened species is projected to increase to more than 85% (2,054). The importance of climate change and habitat loss as drivers of species extinction varies across phytogeographic domains, and this variation requires the adoption of retrospective and prospective conservation strategies that are context specific. We suggest that tropical countries, such as Brazil, should integrate biodiversity conservation and climate change policies (both mitigation and adaptation) to achieve win-win social and environmental gains while halting species extinction.


Nature ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 430 (6995) ◽  
pp. 34-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris D. Thomas ◽  
Stephen E. Williams ◽  
Alison Cameron ◽  
Rhys E. Green ◽  
Michel Bakkenes ◽  
...  

AoB Plants ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Efthalia Stathi ◽  
Konstantinos Kougioumoutzis ◽  
Eleni M Abraham ◽  
Panayiotis Trigas ◽  
Ioannis Ganopoulos ◽  
...  

Abstract The Mediterranean hot spot includes numerous endemic and socio-economically important plant species seriously threatened by climate change and habitat loss. In this study, the genetic diversity of five populations of Cicer graecum, an endangered endemic species from northern Peloponnisos, Greece and a wild relative of the cultivated Cicer arietinum, was investigated using inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSRs) and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers in order to determine levels and structure of genetic variability. Nei’s gene diversity by ISSR and AFLP markers indicated medium to high genetic diversity at the population level. Moreover, AMOVA results suggest that most of the variation exists within (93 % for AFLPs and 65 % for ISSRs), rather than among populations. Furthermore, Principal Component Analysis based on ISSRs positively correlated the genetic differentiation among the populations to the geographic distances, suggesting that the gene flow among distant populations is limited. The ecological adaptation of C. graecum populations was also investigated by correlation of their genetic diversity with certain environmental variables. Aridity arose as the dominant factor positively affecting the genetic diversity of C. graecum populations. We modelled the realized climatic niche of C. graecum in an ensemble forecasting scheme under three different global circulation models and two climate change scenarios. In all cases, a severe range contraction for C. graecum is projected, highlighting the high extinction risk that is probably going to face during the coming decades. These results could be a valuable tool towards the implementation of an integrated in situ and ex situ conservation scheme approach for activating management programmes for this endemic and threatened species.


AoB Plants ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ya-Ping Lin ◽  
Cheng-Yueh Lu ◽  
Cheng-Ruei Lee

Abstract Under intraspecific differentiation driven by differential climatic adaptation, it may be expected that intraspecific genetic groups occur at distinct environments. Populations occupying different niches may therefore differ in their ability to cope with climate change. Here, we addressed this hypothesis with a wild tomato, Solanum pimpinellifolium. This species is distributed from the west side of Andes to the coastal region in Peru and Ecuador and occupies a wide environmental diversity. This environmental diversity is related to the genetic structure of the species providing an ideal material to investigate the isolation by environment hypothesis. While previous hypothesis stated that S. pimpinellifolium originated from northern Peru and migrated northwards and southwards, our results support that S. pimpinellifolium originated from Ecuador and expanded to northern and southern Peru, and during this process, the niche space of S. pimpinellifolium became more associated with cold and drought. We further predicted its fate under anthropogenic climate change. According to our predictions, the northern group will maintain its current extent or even expand to the entire western region of Ecuador. In contrast, we predicted low habitat suitability for the southern group which could potentially lead to the shrinkage of its distribution. In conclusion, we revealed the distinct fates among the differentiated populations driven by environment under global warming conditions.


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