Climate change in open environments: Revisiting the current distribution to understand and safeguard the future of psammophilous squamates of the Diagonal of Open Formations of South America

Abstract

To identify regions that contribute to the persistence of biodiversity, we (1) predict the potential distribution of the psammophilous squamate species endemic of the Diagonal of Open Formations (DOF) in the current climate, (2) identify survey priority areas, (3) estimate the impacts of climate change in two future CO2 emission scenarios, and (4) discuss strategies to safeguard these target species. We created an occurrence database and used environmental variables for the current and future periods to run the potential distribution models. We obtained models with high performance for all species and scenarios. Our study indicates potential occurrence areas for the psammophilous squamates of the DOF that still need to be sampled and are a survey priority for future inventories. In all future projections, climate change is predicted to shift the suitability and promote species range change, modifying the richness patterns for the psammophilous squamate reptiles of DOF. Finally, we demonstrate that future climatic conditions may decrease the effectiveness of current areas in protecting the diversity of these reptiles. Our results highlight the vulnerability of psammophilous squamates from South American Dry Diagonal to climate change and provide crucial information of the need of dynamic public policies for conservation of these species.