Shifting aspect or elevation? The climate change response of ectotherms in a complex mountain topography

Abstract

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The role of Indigenous and Community Conservation Areas in herpetofauna conservation: a preliminary list for Santa Cruz Tepetotutla, Oaxaca Mexico

“…Our records also include new altitudinal information for: Incilius spiculatus , Craugastor polymniae , Sarcohyla celata , Ptychohyla zophodes , Bolitoglossa chinanteca , Anolis rubiginosus , Cryophis hallbergi and Rhadinaea bogertorum . Delimiting accurate altitudinal species’ distribution is gaining relevance because many amphibian and reptile species expand or retract their altitudinal range as a consequence of climate change ( Walther et al 2002 ; Feldmeier et al 2020 ). Usually, these individuals migrate to areas where they can access their required thermal conditions those species with narrow altitudinal distributions, in particular those that occur at high altitudes, under more pressure ( Broennimann et al 2006 ; Subba et al 2018 ; Cordier 2019; Enriquez-Urzelai et al 2019 ).…”

Slow and steady wins the race: contrasted phylogeographic signatures in two Alpine amphibians

“…Given the well-established links between phylogeographic history, genetic variation, landscape fragmentation, and regional vulnerability (Schmitt & Hewitt 2004;Grant et al 2010;Dufresnes & Perrin 2015), accurate intraspecific assessments hold key to quantify the adaptive potential and connectivity of populations for conservation. This applies more than ever to cold-adapted species, which southern diversity hotspots become eroded by climate change (Keppel et al 2012), and which mountain distributions will eventually shift or shrink down (Feldmeier et al 2020).…”

“…2012), and which mountain distributions will eventually shift or shrink down (Feldmeier et al . 2020).…”

Why Is the Alpine Flora Comparatively Robust against Climatic Warming?

“…Such questions had not been asked, the actual life conditions are unknown unless measured, the required experiments involve quite some laboratory equipment and experience (freezing tolerance), the developmental cues which protect plants from becoming active at the wrong time remain unknown, and the actual edges of distribution are hard to identify due to the fragmented microhabitas (Figure 1). Therefore, we are still left with mainly statistical space for time approaches, commonly tied to atmospheric conditions rather than the actual life conditions of plants, and such approaches yield scale (space) dependent effects [29][30][31][32][33][34]. The smaller the geographical scale, that is, the closer it comes to actual habitat mosaic size, the smaller is the predicted fraction of lost habitat types under different climate warming scenarios.…”

“…At such scales, other environmental drivers such as soil conditions, nutrient availability, accumulative influence of nitrogen deposition or changes in moisture regime strongly co-influence plant life (e.g., [72]). As mentioned above, accounting for topographic diversity, also modelling approaches arrive at smaller than often expected changes in species distribution at high elevation [30,31].…”