Climate Change May Pose Additional Threats to the Endangered Endemic Species Encalypta buxbaumioidea in China

作者：Yujia Liao, Xiaotong Song, Yanhui Ye, Jiqi Gu, Ruihong Wang, Zhuogabayong Zhuogabayong, Dong-Ping Zhao, Xiaoming Shao · 发表于：Diversity · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.3390/d15020269 · 被引用次数：13 · 研究领域：Species Distribution and Climate Change、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Bryophyte Studies and Records

Rare and endangered plant species (REPs) are important in biodiversity conservation, and some REPs with narrow habitats are facing serious challenges from climate change. Encalypta buxbaumioidea T. Cao, C, Gao & X, L. Bai is an endangered bryophyte species that is endemic to China. To explore the consequences of climate change on the geographic distribution of this endangered species, we used maximum entropy to predict the potential distribution of this species in China under current and three future scenarios (RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, and RCP 8.5) of two time periods (2050 and 2070) in China and assessed its conservation gaps. Twelve species occurrence sites and nine environmental variables were used in the modeling process. The results show that E. buxbaumioidea distribution is affected mainly by the annual mean temperature, isothermality, precipitation of the coldest quarter, and NDVI. According to species response curves, this species preferred habitats with annual mean temperature from −3 to 6 °C, precipitation of the coldest quarter from 14 to 77 mm, isothermality of more than 70%, and NDVI in the second quarter from 0.15 to 0.68. Currently, the most suitable habitat for this species is mainly distributed in the Qinghai–Tibet plateau, which is about 1.97 × 105 km2. The range would sharply reduce to 0.13–0.56% under future climate change. Nature reserves overlap with only 7.32% of the current distribution and would cover a much less portion of the area occupied by the speci...