Combining the responses of habitat suitability and connectivity to climate change for an East Asian endemic frog

Abstract

Background Understanding the impacts of past and contemporary climate change on biodiversity is critical for effective conservation. Amphibians have weak dispersal abilities, putting them at risk of habitat fragmentation and loss. Both climate change and anthropogenic disturbances exacerbate these risks, increasing the likelihood of additional amphibian extinctions in the near future. The giant spiny frog (Quasipaa spinosa), an endemic species to East Asia, has faced a dramatic population decline over the last few decades. Using the giant spiny frog as an indicator to explore how past and future climate changes affect landscape connectivity, we characterized the shifts in the suitable habitat and habitat connectivity of the frog. Results We found a clear northward shift and a reduction in the extent of suitable habitat during the Last Glacial Maximum for giant spiny frogs; since that time, there has been an expansion of the available habitat. Our modelling showed that “overwarm” climatic conditions would most likely cause a decrease in the available habitat and an increase in the magnitude of population fragmentation in the future. We found that the habitat connectivity of the studied frogs will decrease by 50–75% under future climate change. Our results strengthen the notion that the mountains in southern China and the Sino-Vietnamese transboundary regions can act as critical refugia and priority areas of conservation planning going forward. Conclusions Given that amphibians are highly sensitive to environmental changes, our findings highlight that the responses of habitat suitability and connectivity to climate change can be critical considerations in future conservation measures for species with weak dispersal abilities and should not be neglected, as they all too often are.

Multidimensional amphibian diversity and community structure along a 2 600 m elevational gradient on the eastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

“…The amphibian communities on Mount Emei are under different degrees of environmental impact at different elevations, even those communities governed by competitive exclusion, indicating that community assembly is complex and environmental factors are important for shaping diversity and species co-existence. Both climate change and anthropogenic disturbance exacerbate shifts in distribution range, abundance, and genetic diversity of natural populations ( Elsen & Tingley, 2015 ; Hu et al, 2019 ; Luo et al, 2021 ), and further studies on changes in amphibian diversity and community on Mount Emei under global change are needed to gain deeper insight into the assembly processes. In mountainous regions, however, the unique topography, complex landscapes, and rapid microenvironment changes make it difficult to characterize all climatic factors and thus regular long-term monitoring is needed in the future ( Rahbek et al, 2019 ).…”

Morphological Variation and Its Environmental Correlates in the Taihangshan Swelled-Vented Frog across the Qinling Mountains

“…These findings would be helpful for the conservation of this mountain frog species. To better understand the impacts of environmental changes on morphological variations of this species, future studies clearly need to consider some other local factors (e.g., food availability, interspecific interaction) [ 16 , 49 ], and explore species responses to future environmental changes (e.g., climate change, land-use change) [ 36 , 50 , 51 ].…”

Realized niche shift of an invasive widow spider: drivers and impacts of human activities

“…We ran ten cross-validation replications of the model and weighted them by their AUCs to obtain an ensemble distribution prediction [ 95 , 96 ]. To convert continuous outputs into binary maps (suitable or unsuitable), we extracted the suitability estimates from the models at the locations of the occurrence records, calculated the mean suitability, and used these values as thresholds (AUS climatic model: 0.702, AUS full model: 0.663; INV climatic model: 0.681, INV full model: 0.630) [ 97 , 98 ]. That is, areas with a predicted suitability above and below the threshold were respectively considered as suitable and unsuitable for L. hasselti .…”