Predicting the Potential Current and Future Distribution of the Endangered Endemic Vascular Plant Primula boveana Decne. ex Duby in Egypt

Abstract

Knowledge about population attributes, current geographic distribution, and changes over predicted climate change for many threatened endemic vascular plants is particularly limited in arid mountain environments. Primula boveana is one of the rarest and threatened plants worldwide, surviving exclusively in Saint Catherine Protectorate in the Sinaic biogeographic subsector of Egypt. This study aimed to define the current state of P. boveana populations, predict its current potential distribution, and use the best-model outputs to guide in field sampling and to forecast its future distribution under two climate change scenarios. The MaxEnt algorithm was used by relating 10 occurrence-points with different environmental predictors (27 bioclimatic, 3 topographic, and 8 edaphic factors). At the current knowledge level, the population size of P. boveana consists of 796 individuals, including 137 matures, distributed in only 250 m2. The Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCorA) displayed that population attributes (density, cover, size index, and plant vigor) were positively correlated with elevation, precipitation, and pH. Based on the best-fitting model, most predicted suitable central sites (69 km2) of P. boveana were located in the cool shaded high-elevated middle northern part of St. Catherine. Elevation, precipitation, temperature, and soil pH were the key contributors to P. boveana distribution in Egypt. After field trips in suitable predicted sites, we confirmed five extinct localities where P. boveana has been previously recorded and no new population was found. The projected map showed an upward range shift through the contraction of sites between 1800 and 2000 m and expansion towards high elevation (above 2000 m) at the southern parts of the St. Catherine area. To conserve P. boveana, it is recommended to initiate in situ conservation through reinforcement and reintroduction actions.

Interspecific Variance of Suitable Habitat Changes for Four Alpine Rhododendron Species under Climate Change: Implications for Their Reintroductions

“…MAXENT is reliable in predicting the potential geographic distributions of species [19][20][21]23]. Ardestani reported that [22] the species with a wide distribution range tend to have low AUC values.…”

“…The authors found that soil factors can accurately limit the distribution range of species on the basis of climate factors, and the accuracy of climate and soil models for C. acuminata is high. Abdelaal [23] suggested that combining climate variables with soil variables can predict the distribution of species accurately. In the present study, climate, topographic, and soil variables were combined to explore the potential habitat distribution shift in current and future periods of four alpine Rhododendron species under rapid climate change.…”

“…Predicting habitat suitability and the potential habitat distribution range is critical to the reintroduction of endangered plants [22,23]. Here, we integrate climate and soil variables to predict the suitable habitat for four Rhododendron species in China.…”

Spatiotemporal dynamics of habitat suitability for the Ethiopian staple crop, Eragrostis tef (teff), under changing climate

“…Existing research of different regions has reported variables found to have an important effect on various species. For example: Evangelista, Young & Burnett, 2013 Studied teff by using three climate projection model that the value of predictable were 0.79 (Bio16, Bio12, Bio19, Bio15) and others studied different species in different geographical area including, (Elham et al, 2015) (Bio2, Bio3, Bio7, Bio8, Bio13, Bio14, Bio15, Bio18), ( Ardestani et al, 2015 ) (Bio8, Bio19, Bio2, Bio13, Bio7), Sen et al, 2016 (Bio4 and Bio19), Rong et al, 2019 (Bio1, Bio8 and elevation), ( Abdelaal et al, 2020 ) (elevation, precipitation, temperature and soil), and Yang et al, 2020 (Temp Seasonality, Precipitation, Vegetation Type, Soil Type). Our results indicate that temperature of coldest quarter had a predictability value of 0.83 for teff, which is stronger than that of any other existing model.…”

Improving the knowledge of plant potential biodiversity-ecosystem services links using maps at the regional level in Southern Patagonia

“…climatic, topographic, landscape) with the occurrence of species in one particular area (Guisan and Zimmermann 2000;Hirzel et al 2002) determining the PHS of each species. During the last years, studies in plant species distribution were significantly increased (Bradley et al 2012), mostly related to woody species (Silva et al 2017), and invasive (Chai et al 2016;Wan and Wang 2018) or endangered plant species (Abdelaal et al 2020). Nevertheless, few studies combined multiple PHS to create a unique potential biodiversity map (PBM) that synthetizes the information for multiple species at the landscape level (e.g.…”