Climate change challenges IUCN conservation priorities: a test with western Mediterranean amphibians

Abstract

One common approach to assigning conservation priorities during the current biodiversity crisis is to identify and direct efforts to high profile, vulnerable taxa, and important biodiversity areas. We addressed the first issue by assessing the comparison between conservation status and habitat suitability under differing climate change scenarios for sixteen species of five amphibian families (Pelobatidae, Bufonidae, Alytidae, Hylidae and Ranidae) distributed on both sides of the Gibraltar Strait, with the aim of verify whether potentially sensible species under climatic change scenarios are or not considered at risk presently in the IUCN current categories. We have addressed this with an environmental niche modelling algorithm (MaxEnt) and projecting the outputs in four future climatic change scenarios. Our results demonstrate that climatic niches of some species may currently match their conservation category, with Pelobates varaldii having the narrowest distribution and being the more endangered species, but not all responses to predicted climatic change scenarios are related to conservation status. Some suggest notable changes in potential climatic habitats, with both substantial increase (7 species) and decrease (5 species) represented. Threatened species such as P. varaldii could be climatically favored whereas currently more abundant species could maintain, increase, or reduce their habitat distribution. These results have implications for current conservation strategies, and suggest that this approach deserves consideration as part of any species or habitat conservation strategy in the future.