Abstract
Clarifying the influences of paleoclimate changes on the disjunct distribution formation of plants allows a historical and mechanical understanding of current vegetation and biodiversity. This study investigated the influences of paleoclimate changes on the present disjunct distribution formation of Pinus koraiensis (Korean pine) using species distribution modeling. A species distribution model (SDM) was built using maximum entropy principle algorithms (MaxEnt), data from 152 occurrences of the species, and four bioclimatic variables at 2.5 arcminute (approximately 5 km) spatial resolution. The simulation revealed the excellent fit of the MaxEnt model performance, with an area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.922 and continuous Boyce index (BCI) value of 0.925 with fivefold cross-validation. The most important climatic factor was the minimum temperature of the coldest month. Suitable habitats for the species ranged between − 30.1 and − 4.1 °C. Projected suitable habitats under the Last Glacial Maximum (approximately 22,000 years ago [ka BP]: LGM) period showed wide distributions in eastern China, the southern part of the Korean Peninsula, and the Japanese Archipelago. After the mid-Holocene (approximately 6 ka BP), the suitable habitats expanded northwards in continental regions and retreated from both north and southwest of Japan. This eventually formed disjunct suitable habitats in central Japan. An increase in temperature after the LGM period caused the migration of P. koraiensis toward new, suitable habitats in continental Northeast Asia, while species in the Japanese Archipelago retreated, forming the present disjunct distributions.
Highlights
The factors that contribute to the establishment of geographical disjunct distributions of plant species have long captured the interest of botanists and ecologists (e.g., Wood 1972; Wen 1999; Qian and Ricklefs 2000; Richard 2006)
Habitats considered suitable for P. koraiensis were identified in the mid to northern regions of the Korean Peninsula, the Russian Far East, a part of northeast China, central Honshu, and some western regions of the Japanese Archipelago (Fig. 2b)
Our model identified minimum temperature of the coldest month (MiCM) as being the most important climatic factor contributing to shifts in the distribution of P. koraiensis (Table 1), which is consistent with previous regional species distribution model (SDM) results for the species (Ahn et al 2015)
Summary
The factors that contribute to the establishment of geographical disjunct distributions of plant species have long captured the interest of botanists and ecologists (e.g., Wood 1972; Wen 1999; Qian and Ricklefs 2000; Richard 2006). Climatic changes over the glacial and interglacial periods during the Quaternary period (over the past 2.6 million years) have caused the expansion and retraction of plant habitats, local extinctions, and the development of present-day disjunct distribution patterns (Hewitt 1996; Comes and Kadereit 1998; Svenning et al 2008; Chen et al 2012; Shitara et al 2018). Elucidating the processes whereby the disjunct distributions of plant species develop in relation to paleoclimate change provides an important context for understanding the development of present-day vegetation and biodiversity (Wang et al 2017). H. Ohashi Department of Wildlife Biology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Forest Research and Management Organization, 1 Matsunosato, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki 305-8687, Japan. N. Tanaka Environment Consultant ENVI, 602-89 Akatsuka, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki 305-0062, Japan
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