Abstract
Fishing spiders (Dolomedes spp.) make an interesting model to predict the impact of global changes because they are generalist, opportunistic predators, whose distribution is driven mostly by abiotic factors. Yet, the two European species are expected to react differently to forthcoming environmental changes, because of habitat specialization and initial range. We used an original combination of habitat and dispersal data to revisit these predictions under various climatic scenarios. We used the future range of suitable habitat, predicted with habitat variables only, as a base layer to further predict the range or reachable habitat by accounting for both dispersal ability and landscape connectivity. Our results confirm the northward shift in range and indicate that the area of co-occurrences should also increase. However, reachable habitat should expand less than suitable habitat, especially when accounting for landscape connectivity. In addition, the potential range expansion was further limited for the red-listed D. plantarius, which is more of a habitat specialist and has a lower ability to disperse. This study highlights the importance of looking beyond habitat variables to produce more accurate predictions for the future of arthropods populations.
Highlights
Climate change, which is threatening all ecosystems w orldwide[1], is a multi-factor problem that goes beyond raising temperatures only[2,3]
We evaluated the predictive accuracy of individual models with the true skill statistic (TSS) and the area under the receiving operating curve (AUROC)
The range of suitable habitat should expand for both D. fimbriatus and D. plantarius
Summary
Climate change, which is threatening all ecosystems w orldwide[1], is a multi-factor problem that goes beyond raising temperatures only[2,3]. SDMs assume that the ecological niche is stable, i.e. that the same factors limit the species in space and time[21] Under these assumptions, SDMs are used to define habitat suitability, which is the range of physical locations where one species can live[22]. Spiders are relatively independent of a specific prey community, and their assemblage and distribution are mostly influenced by habitat and land use[29], which makes them good study cases for SDMs. Fennoscandia is a potential climatic refugium for spider populations against the current global warming as their range is expected to expand Northward in Europe[30,31]. D. fimbriatus could become a competitor to D. plantarius in syntopic sites if global change brings more frequent drought events
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