Future projections for Mexican faunas under global climate change scenarios

Abstract

Global climates are changing rapidly, with unexpected consequences. Because elements of biodiversity respond intimately to climate as an important driving force of distributional limitation, distributional shifts and biodiversity losses are expected. Nevertheless, in spite of modelling efforts focused on single species or entire ecosystems, a few preliminary surveys of fauna-wide effects, and evidence of climate change-mediated shifts in several species, the likely effects of climate change on species' distributions remain little known, and fauna-wide or community-level effects are almost completely unexplored. Here, using a genetic algorithm and museum specimen occurrence data, we develop ecological niche models for 1,870 species occurring in Mexico and project them onto two climate surfaces modelled for 2055. Although extinctions and drastic range reductions are predicted to be relatively few, species turnover in some local communities is predicted to be high (>40% of species), suggesting that severe ecological perturbations may result.

Ecological niche modelling and prioritizing areas for species reintroductions

“…Our general approach to modelling species' ecological niches and predicting geographic distributions is described in detail elsewhere (Stockwell & Peters, 1999), as are previous tests of this modelling technique in anticipating diverse phenomena (Peterson & Cohoon, 1999;Peterson et al, 2002a;Peterson & Vieglais, 2001;Stockwell & Peterson, 2002a,b;Anderson et al, 2003). The ecological niche of a species can be defined as those ecological conditions under which it can maintain populations without immigration (Grinnell, 1917); as such, it is defined in multidimensional environmental space (MacArthur, 1972).…”

Climate change increases the likelihood of catastrophic avian mortality events during extreme heat waves

“…Most recent research has focused on climate envelope modelling that predicts range shifts (e.g. Erasmus et al 2002;Peterson et al 2002) and relatively few studies have examined the direct effects of extreme events (Parmesan et al 2000;Welbergen et al 2007), or developed physiological models directly linking predicted climates to survival and/or reproduction (Kearney & Porter 2009).…”

Extinction risk from climate change

“…For each species we use the modelled association between current climates (such as temperature, precipitation and seasonality) and present-day distributions to estimate current distributional areas [7][8][9][10][11][12] . This 'climate envelope' represents the conditions under which populations of a species currently persist in the face of competitors and natural enemies.…”

“…This 'climate envelope' represents the conditions under which populations of a species currently persist in the face of competitors and natural enemies. Future distributions are estimated by assuming that current envelopes are retained and can be projected for future climate scenarios [7][8][9][10][11][12] . We assume that a species either has no limits to dispersal such that its future distribution becomes the entire area projected by the climate envelope model or that it is incapable of dispersal, in which case the new distribution is the overlap between current and future potential distributions (for example, species with little dispersal or that inhabit fragmented landscapes) 11 .…”