scholarly journals Using species distribution models to infer potential climate change-induced range shifts of freshwater fish in south-eastern Australia

2011 ◽  
Vol 62 (9) ◽  
pp. 1043 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Bond ◽  
Jim Thomson ◽  
Paul Reich ◽  
Janet Stein

There are few quantitative predictions for the impacts of climate change on freshwater fish in Australia. We developed species distribution models (SDMs) linking historical fish distributions for 43 species from Victorian streams to a suite of hydro-climatic and catchment predictors, and applied these models to explore predicted range shifts under future climate-change scenarios. Here, we present summary results for the 43 species, together with a more detailed analysis for a subset of species with distinct distributions in relation to temperature and hydrology. Range shifts increased from the lower to upper climate-change scenarios, with most species predicted to undergo some degree of range shift. Changes in total occupancy ranged from –38% to +63% under the lower climate-change scenario to –47% to +182% under the upper climate-change scenario. We do, however, caution that range expansions are more putative than range contractions, because the effects of barriers, limited dispersal and potential life-history factors are likely to exclude some areas from being colonised. As well as potentially informing more mechanistic modelling approaches, quantitative predictions such as these should be seen as representing hypotheses to be tested and discussed, and should be valuable for informing long-term strategies to protect aquatic biota.

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adjie Pamungkas ◽  
Sarah Bekessy ◽  
Ruth Lane

Reducing community vulnerability to flooding is increasingly important given predicted intensive flood events in many parts of the world. We built a community vulnerability model to explore the effectiveness of a range of proactive and reactive adaptations to reduce community vulnerability to flood. The model consists of floods, victims, housings, responses, savings, expenditure and income sub models. We explore the robustness of adaptations under current conditions and under a range of future climate change scenarios. We present results of this model for a case study of Centini Village in Lamongan Municipality, Indonesia, which is highly vulnerable to the impacts of annual small-scale and infrequent extreme floods.  We compare 11 proactive adaptations using indicators of victims, damage/losses and recovery process to reflect the level of vulnerability. We find that reforestation and flood infrastructure redevelopment are the most effective proactive adaptations for minimising vulnerability to flood under current condition. Under climate change scenario, the floods are predicted to increase 17% on the average and 5% on the maximum measurements. The increasing floods result reforestation is the only effective adaptations in the future under climate change scenario.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Mammola ◽  
Elena Piano ◽  
Alexandra Jones ◽  
Andrea Dejanaz ◽  
Marco Isaia

Subterranean ecosystems offer intriguing opportunities to study mechanisms underlying responses to changes in climate because species within them are often adapted to largely constant temperatures. However, responses of specialized subterranean species to anthropogenic climate warming are still largely undiscussed. We combined physiological tests, species distribution models and genetic data to investigate the potential effect of raising temperatures on subterranean coenosis. We used spiders of the genus Troglohyphantes Joseph, 1881 (Araneae: Linyphiidae) as model organisms, focusing on a coherent biogeographic area of the Western Alps in which the distribution of these spiders has been well documented. Thermal tolerance experiments in climatic chambers pointed at a reduced physiological tolerance to temperature fluctuations at increasing levels of troglomorphism. This result suggests that, during their subterranean evolution, spiders have progressively fine-tuned thermal tolerance to the constant and narrow temperature ranges of their habitats. Further evidence of the sensitivity of our model species to temperature increase derives from species distribution models projected onto different climate change scenarios. Model projections point toward a future decline in habitat suitability for subterranean spiders. Moreover, genetic data at the population/species interface are suggestive of limited gene flow between subterranean populations, testifying reduced dispersal capacity and habitat connectivity. In light of these results, we predict the potential extinction of the most restricted endemic species. Our findings therefore emphasize the importance of considering subterranean organisms as model species for ecological studies dealing with climatic changes, and to extend such investigations to other subterranean systems worldwide.


Author(s):  
Teng Long ◽  
Junfeng Tang ◽  
Nicholas Pilfold ◽  
Xuzhe Zhao ◽  
Tingfa Dong

Understanding and predicting how species will response to future climate change is crucial for biodiversity conservation. Here, we conducted an assessment of future climate change impacts on the distribution of D. involucrate in China, using the most recent global circulation models developed in the sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC6). We assessed the potential range shifts in this species by using an ensemble of species distribution models (SDMs). The ensemble SDMs exhibited high predictive ability and suggested that the temperature annual range, annual mean temperature, and precipitation of the driest month are the most influential predictors in shaping distribution patterns of this species. The projections of the ensemble SDMs also suggested that D. involucrate is very vulnerable to future climate change, with at least one-third of its suitable range expected to be lost in all future climate change scenarios and will shift to the northward of high-latitude regions. These findings suggest that it is of great urgent and significance to adaptive management strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change on D. involucrate.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Tremblay ◽  
Heath A. MacMillan ◽  
Heather M. Kharouba

AbstractClimate change is driving range shifts, and a lack of cold tolerance is hypothesized to constrain insect range expansion at poleward latitudes. However, few, if any, studies have tested this hypothesis during autumn when organisms are subjected to sporadic low temperature exposure but may not have become cold tolerant yet. In this study, we integrated organismal thermal tolerance measures into species distribution models for larvae of the Giant Swallowtail butterfly, Papilio cresphontes, living at the northern edge of its actively expanding range. Cold hardiness of field-collected larvae was determined using three common metrics of cold-induced physiological thresholds: the supercooling point (SCP), critical thermal minimum (CTmin), and survival following cold exposure. P. cresphontes larvae in autumn have a CTmin of 2.14°C, and were determined to be tolerant of chilling. These larvae have a SCP of −6.6°C and can survive prolonged exposure to −2°C. They generally die, however, at temperatures below their SCP (−8°C), suggesting they are chill tolerant or modestly freeze avoidant. Using this information, we examined the importance of low temperatures at a broad scale, by comparing species distribution models of P. cresphontes based only on environmental data derived from other sources to models that also included the cold tolerance parameters generated experimentally. Our modelling revealed that growing degree-days and precipitation best predicted the distribution of P. cresphontes, while the cold tolerance variables did not explain much variation in habitat suitability. As such, the modelling results were consistent with our experimental results: low temperatures in autumn are unlikely to limit the distribution of P. cresphontes. Further investigation into the ecological relevance of the physiological thresholds determined here will help determine how climate limits the distribution of P. cresphontes. Understanding the factors that limit species distributions is key to predicting how climate change will drive species range shifts.


Author(s):  
Meredith McClure ◽  
Sarah Olson ◽  
Catherine Haase ◽  
Liam McGuire ◽  
C. Hranac ◽  
...  

Climate change and disease are threats to biodiversity that may compound and interact with one another in ways that are difficult to predict. White-nose syndrome (WNS), caused by a cold-loving fungus (Pseudogymnoascus destructans), has had devastating impacts on North American hibernating bats, and impact severity has been linked to hibernaculum microclimate conditions. As WNS spreads across the continent and climate conditions change, anticipating these stressors’ combined impacts may improve conservation outcomes for bats. We build on the recent development of winter species distribution models for five North American bat species, which used a hybrid correlative-mechanistic approach to integrate spatially explicit winter survivorship estimates from a bioenergetic model of hibernation physiology. We apply this bioenergetic model given the presence of P. destructans , including parameters capturing its climate-dependent growth as well as its climate-dependent effects on host physiology, under both current climate conditions and scenarios of future climate change. We then update species distribution models with the resulting survivorship estimates to predict changes in winter hibernacula suitability under future conditions. Exposure to P. destructans is generally projected to decrease bats’ winter occurrence probability, but in many areas, changes in climate are projected to lessen the detrimental impacts of WNS. This rescue effect is not predicted for all species or geographies and may arrive too late to benefit many hibernacula. However, our findings offer hope that proactive conservation strategies to minimize other sources of mortality could allow bat populations exposed to P. destructans to persist long enough for conditions to improve.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Casazza ◽  
Thomas Abeli ◽  
Gianluigi Bacchetta ◽  
Davide Dagnino ◽  
Giuseppe Fenu ◽  
...  

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