Abstract
Climate change has impacted biodiversity, affecting species and altering their geographical distribution. Besides understanding the impact in the species, it has been advocated that answering if different traits will be differently impacted could allow refined predictions of how climate change will jeopardize biodiversity. Our aim was to evaluate if climate change will potentially impact plant species differently, considering their traits. We evaluated 608 plant species that occur in the naturally open areas of ferruginous outcrops (namely, cangas) in the National Forest of Carajás (Eastern Amazon). Firstly, we estimated the effects of climate change on each species using species distribution modeling, and analyzed this impact in the set containing all species. Secondly, we classified plant species considering the following traits: (i) pollination syndromes (melittophily, phalaenophily, psychophily, cantharophily, entomophily, ornithophily, chiropterophily, anemophily); (ii) habit (tree, shrub, herb, liana, parasite); and (iii) the main habitat of occurrence (open areas and forests). Thirdly, we investigated if the effects of climate change could be significantly more intense considering all the different traits quoted. Our results showed that most plant species will potentially face reduction of suitable habitats under future climate and the scenarios showed that 42% of them may not find suitable areas in the cangas of Carajás. We found no significant difference within each analyzed trait, considering the potential impact of climate change. The most climatically suitable areas (i.e., areas with high probability of species occurrence in the future) are those in the southwest of the study area. These areas can be considered as priority areas for species protection against climate change.
Highlights
Climate change due to anthropogenic activities has had negative effects on biodiversity, especially due to its unprecedented speed (Pacifici et al, 2015; Venter et al, 2016)
According to the scenarios used, most of the 608 analyzed plant species potentially will face a severe reduction in their geographic distribution in the future decades due to climate change
We found no significant difference in the impact of climate change on each pollination syndromes, habit or main habitat, i.e., the traits analyzed will be potentially affected
Summary
Climate change due to anthropogenic activities has had negative effects on biodiversity, especially due to its unprecedented speed (Pacifici et al, 2015; Venter et al, 2016). Anticipating the potential impact of climate change on plant species, especially considering different traits, is urgently need to effective conservation strategies. Species traits are any characteristic of an individual that can be assigned to a species, which could be phenological, morphological, physiological, reproductive, or behavioral (Kissling et al, 2018). They were defined as a measurable property of organisms; a functional trait is one that strongly influences organismal performance, and it can provide important information about the species performance, especially considering global changes (McGill et al, 2006)
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