scholarly journals Phylogeography and niche modelling: reciprocal enlightenment

Mammalia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Govan Pahad ◽  
Claudine Montgelard ◽  
Bettine Jansen van Vuuren

Abstract Phylogeography examines the spatial genetic structure of species. Environmental niche modelling (or ecological niche modelling; ENM) examines the environmental limits of a species’ ecological niche. These two fields have great potential to be used together. ENM can shed light on how phylogeographical patterns develop and help identify possible drivers of spatial structure that need to be further investigated. Specifically, ENM can be used to test for niche differentiation among clades, identify factors limiting individual clades and identify barriers and contact zones. It can also be used to test hypotheses regarding the effects of historical and future climate change on spatial genetic patterns by projecting niches using palaeoclimate or future climate data. Conversely, phylogeographical information can populate ENM with within-species genetic diversity. Where adaptive variation exists among clades within a species, modelling their niches separately can improve predictions of historical distribution patterns and future responses to climate change. Awareness of patterns of genetic diversity in niche modelling can also alert conservationists to the potential loss of genetically diverse areas in a species’ range. Here, we provide a simplistic overview of both fields, and focus on their potential for integration, encouraging researchers on both sides to take advantage of the opportunities available.

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mengxiao Yan ◽  
Ruibin Liu ◽  
Ying Li ◽  
Andrew L. Hipp ◽  
Min Deng ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Understanding the origin of genetic variation is the key to predict how species will respond to future climate change. The genus Quercus is a species-rich and ecologically diverse woody genus that dominates a wide range of forests and woodland communities of the Northern Hemisphere. Quercus thus offers a unique opportunity to investigate how adaptation to environmental changes has shaped the spatial genetic structure of closely related lineages. Furthermore, Quercus provides a deep insight into how tree species will respond to future climate change. This study investigated whether closely related Quercus lineages have similar spatial genetic structures and moreover, what roles have their geographic distribution, ecological tolerance, and historical environmental changes played in the similar or distinct genetic structures. Results Despite their close relationships, the three main oak lineages (Quercus sections Cyclobalanopsis, Ilex, and Quercus) have different spatial genetic patterns and occupy different climatic niches. The lowest level and most homogeneous pattern of genetic diversity was found in section Cyclobalanopsis, which is restricted to warm and humid climates. The highest genetic diversity and strongest geographic genetic structure were found in section Ilex, which is due to their long-term isolation and strong local adaptation. The widespread section Quercus is distributed across the most heterogeneous range of environments; however, it exhibited moderate haplotype diversity. This is likely due to regional extinction during Quaternary climatic fluctuation in Europe and North America. Conclusions Genetic variations of sections Ilex and Quercus were significantly predicted by geographic and climate variations, while those of section Cyclobalanopsis were poorly predictable by geographic or climatic diversity. Apart from the different historical environmental changes experienced by different sections, variation of their ecological or climatic tolerances and physiological traits induced varying responses to similar environment changes, resulting in distinct spatial genetic patterns.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Medrano-Vizcaíno ◽  
Patricia Gutiérrez-Salazar

Nasuella olivacea is an endemic mammal from the Andes of Ecuador and Colombia. Due to its rarity, aspects about its natural history, ecology and distribution patterns are not well known, therefore, research is needed to generate knowledge about this carnivore and a first step is studying suitable habitat areas. We performed Ecological Niche Models and applied future climate change scenarios (2.6 and 8.5 RCP) to determine the potential distribution of this mammal in Colombia and Ecuador, with current and future climate change conditions; furthermore, we analysed its distribution along several land covers. We found that N. olivacea is likely to be found in areas where no records have been reported previously; likewise, climate change conditions would increase suitable distribution areas. Concerning land cover, 73.4% of N. olivacea potential distribution was located outside Protected Areas (PA), 46.1% in Forests and 40.3% in Agricultural Lands. These findings highlight the need to further research understudied species, furthering our understanding about distribution trends and responses to changing climatic conditions, as well as informig future PA designing. These are essential tools for supporting wildlife conservation plans, being applicable for rare species whose biology and ecology remain unknown.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Felipe de Araujo Lira ◽  
Raúl Badillo-Montaño ◽  
Andrés Lira-Noriega ◽  
Cleide Maria Ribeiro de Albuquerque

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Yuan ◽  
Shuang-ye Wu ◽  
Shugui Hou

<p>This study aims to establish future vegetation changes in the east and central of northern China (ECNC), an ecologically sensitive region in the transition zonal from humid monsoonal to arid continental climate. The region has experienced significant greening in the past several decades. However, few studies exist on how vegetation will change with future climate change, and great uncertainties exist due to complex, and often spatially non-stationary, relationships between vegetation and climate. In this study, we first used historical NDVI and climate data to model this spatially variable relationship with Geographically Weighted Logit Regression. We found that temperature and precipitation could explain, on average, 43% of NDVI variance, and they could be used to model NDVI fairly well. We then establish future climate change using the output of 11 CMIP6 models for the medium (SSP245) and high (SSP585) emission scenarios for the mid-century (2041-2070) and late-century (2071-2100). The results show that for this region, both temperature and precipitation will increase under both scenarios. By late-century under SSP585, precipitation is projected to increase by 25.12% and temperature is projected to increase 5.87<sup>o</sup>C in ECNC. Finally, we used future climate conditions as input for the regression models to project future vegetation (indicated by NDVI). We found that NDVI will increase under climate change. By mid-century, the average NDVI in ECNC will increase by 0.024 and 0.021 under SSP245 and SSP585. By late-century, it will increase by 0.016 and 0.006 under SSP245 and SSP585 respectively. Although NDVI is projected to increase, the magnitude of increase is likely to diminish with higher emission scenarios, possibly due to the benefit of precipitation increase being gradually encroached by the detrimental effects of temperature increase. Moreover, despite the overall NDVI increase, the area likely to suffer vegetation degradation will also expands, particularly in the western part of ECNC. With higher emissions and later into the century, region with low NDVI is likely to shift and/or expand north-forward. Our results could provide important information on possible vegetation changes, which could help to develop effective management strategies to ensure ecological and economic sustainability in the future.</p>


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn Yannic ◽  
Loïc Pellissier ◽  
Joaquín Ortego ◽  
Nicolas Lecomte ◽  
Serge Couturier ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 617-647
Author(s):  
Y. Yin ◽  
Q. Tang ◽  
X. Liu

Abstract. Climate change may affect crop development and yield, and consequently cast a shadow of doubt over China's food self-sufficiency efforts. In this study we used the model projections of a couple of global gridded crop models (GGCMs) to assess the effects of future climate change on the potential yields of the major crops (i.e. wheat, rice, maize and soybean) over China. The GGCMs were forced with the bias-corrected climate data from 5 global climate models (GCMs) under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 8.5 which were made available by the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP). The results show that the potential yields of rice may increase over a large portion of China. Climate change may benefit food productions over the high-altitude and cold regions where are outside current main agricultural area. However, the potential yield of maize, soybean and wheat may decrease in a large portion of the current main crop planting areas such as North China Plain. Development of new agronomic management strategy may be useful for coping with climate change in the areas with high risk of yield reduction.


PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e11370
Author(s):  
Mauricio Diazgranados ◽  
Carolina Tovar ◽  
Thomas R. Etherington ◽  
Paula A. Rodríguez-Zorro ◽  
Carolina Castellanos-Castro ◽  
...  

Background The páramos, the high-elevation ecosystems of the northern Andes, are well-known for their high species richness and provide a variety of ecosystem services to local subsistence-based communities and regional urbanizations. Climate change is expected to negatively affect the provision of these services, but the level of this impact is still unclear. Here we assess future climate change impact on the ecosystem services provided by the critically important páramos of the department of Boyacá in Colombia, of which over 25% of its territory is páramo. Methods We first performed an extensive literature review to identify useful species of Boyacá, and selected 103 key plant species that, based on their uses, support the provision of ecosystem services in the páramos. We collated occurrence information for each key species and using a Mahalanobis distance approach we applied climate niche modelling for current and future conditions. Results We show an overall tendency of reduction in area for all ecosystem services under future climate conditions (mostly a loss of 10% but reaching up to a loss of 40%), but we observe also increases, and responses differ in intensity loss. Services such as Food for animals, Material and Medicinal, show a high range of changes that includes both positive and negative outcomes, while for Food for humans the responses are mostly substantially negative. Responses are less extreme than those projected for individual species but are often complex because a given ecosystem service is provided by several species. As the level of functional or ecological redundancy between species is not yet known, there is an urgency to expand our knowledge on páramos ecosystem services for more species. Our results are crucial for decision-makers, social and conservation organizations to support sustainable strategies to monitor and mitigate the potential consequences of climate change for human livelihoods in mountainous settings.


Author(s):  
Christian Birkel ◽  
Joni Dehaspe ◽  
Andrés Chavarría-Palma ◽  
Nelson Venegas-Cordero ◽  
Rene Capell ◽  
...  

Efforts to protect tropical ecosystems aim at implementing biological corridors across the national territory of Costa Rica. However, potential near-future climate change challenges the effectiveness of such conservation measures. For this purpose, we developed near-future climate change scenarios at high spatial resolution using open-access global data from the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS). These projections resulted from downscaling (to a 1km2 national grid) and quantile-mapping bias-correction of the Essential Climate Variables Global Circulation Model (ECV_GCM) ensemble mean from the CDS using a moderate Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5). Projections were evaluated with limited local station data and applied to generate future ecosystem indicators (Holdridge Life Zones, HLZs). We show significantly increasing temperatures of 2.6°C with a spatial variability of ± 0.4°C for Costa Rica until 2040 with local differences (higher temperatures projected for the southern Costa Rican Caribbean). The future mean annual precipitation showed slightly wetter conditions (120 ± 43 mm/year) and most prominently in the Costa Rican Caribbean and south Pacific, but no significant drying in the north of Costa Rica by 2040. The bias-corrected climate data were aggregated to decadal and 30-year average (1971–2040) life zone ecosystem indicators that could potentially show ecosystem shifts. Changes in the life zones are most likely due to warmer temperatures and to a lesser extent caused by projected wetter conditions. Shifts are more likely to occur at higher elevations with a potential loss of the sub-tropical rainforest ecosystem. The projections support diminishing tropical dry forests and slightly increasing tropical rain and wet forests in the biological corridors of the driest and wettest regions, respectively. A countrywide spatial uniformity of dominating tropical moist forests (increase from 24% to 49%) at the expense of other HLZs was projected by 2040.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rishiraj Dutta

The analysis of this study focused on the tea growing areas of Northeast India to provide predictions for future climate scenarios and its impact on tea production by 2050. The applied methodology involves a combination of current climate data with future climate change predictions from different models for 2050 as derived by WorldClim and IPCC4 (CIAT recommended). The results showed the possibility of an increase in average temperature by 2 °C in 2050, while not much variation is observed in the rainfall pattern. A change in tea production period is also expected by 2050 making tea planters look for alternative crops as an adaptive measure to keep the industry on its feet. With such expected impacts on tea production, the planters would need to make changes in their management practices to adapt to the evolving conditions and environment. In this study, the climate data were used as input to DIVA GIS Model. Monthly climate data were fed into Cranfield University Plantation Productivity Analysis for Tea Model (CUPPA Tea Model) to simulate observed and predicted yields. The study further shows that the overall climate will become less seasonal in terms of variation through the years followed by expected variations in monthly precipitation during the peak production months.


2021 ◽  
pp. 121-142
Author(s):  
Sridhara Nayak ◽  
Tetsuya Takemi

AbstractThis study explores a comprehensive assessment of future climate change in terms of the climatologies, distribution patterns, annual cycles, and frequency distributions of temperature and precipitation over India by analyzing 190 mega-ensemble experimental results. The results indicate that the annual mean surface temperatures over Indian regions are typically 25 ℃ or higher in the present climate (1951–2010) and are expected to increase by 3–5 ℃ in the future climate (2051–2110). Some desert regions in the west and tropical humid climate types in the central and south regions of the country show possible temperature increases of 4–5 ℃, while the temperatures over the subtropical humid climates in the north and east regions of the country show increases of 3–4 ℃. The precipitation amounts over the arid and semiarid climate types in the western region and over some tropical rainforest climate zones in the southwest region show increases of 0.5 mm d−1 in the future climate, and the precipitation amounts over the temperate, rainy climate types in the northeast region show increases of more than 1 mm d−1. This study also discusses future changes in various climatic variables, including vertical velocity, air temperature, specific humidity, cloud cover, and relative humidity.


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