Predicting the spatial and temporal effects of climate change on the south american lizard genus Teius (Squamata: Teiidae)
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biogeography, Zoology, Climate Change Biology, Spatial and Geographic Information Science
- Keywords
- Mid-Holocene, 2050 scenario, niche modeling, climate change, reptiles, Teius
- Copyright
- © 2018 Minoli et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Predicting the spatial and temporal effects of climate change on the south american lizard genus Teius (Squamata: Teiidae) PeerJ Preprints 6:e26560v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26560v1
Abstract
Background. The consequences of past or future climate change have been studied in many physical and biological systems, and their effects could change the ecology and spatial distribution of suitable areas for a wide variety of organisms.
Methods. We analyzed the environmental and geographic space of the current suitable area and we projected these conditions into Mid-Holocene and 2050 RCP8.5 scenarios. Through these projections, we assessed and quantified whether climate change would affect the distribution and size of environmental and geographic space for lizard species of the genus Teius.
Results. The potentially suitable geographic area for the Mid-Holocene decreased for T. oculatus (-29.55%) and for T. teyou (-6.82%), but for T. suquiensis it was inferred as a larger suitable area (+26%). For the future scenario all species showed a decrease in the potentially suitable area compared to the present (T. oculatus = -9.30%, T. teyou = -0.79%, T. suquiensis = -37.58%). The first 3 PCA axes in the environmental space explained more than 86% of the variation for each temporal scenario for all species. The higher contribution for PC1-2 in Mid-Holocene and Present were mostly related to temperature and for PC3 with altitude variables: and for the 2050 scenario were temperature for PC1, precipitation for PC2 and altitude-temperature for PC3. The hypervolumen distance for T. oculatus from the Present scenario to Mid-Holocene = 67.80 and for 2050 = 309.10; for T. teyou to Mid-Holocene = 95.67 and for 2050 = 442.67; for T. suquiensis to Mid-Holocene = 275.57 and for 2050 = 248.07.
Discussion. These results suggest that current geographic space versus the other temporal forecast of all Teius species, showed different specific magnitude changes in their potentially suitable areas. This work illustrates how ectothermic organisms might have to face major changes in their environmental and geographic space as a consequence of the effect of climate changes.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Supplementary figures
Supplementary figures from material and method analyses.