Abstract
To protect endangered species and restore their habitats, it is important to be able to predict their potential geographic distributions. The Dendrobium plant is important in traditional Chinese medicine, but urban expansion and over-exploitation have led to a decrease of Dendrobium resources. To achieve sustainable development of Dendrobium resources, here we systematically analyze the spatial and temporal distribution of two Dendrobium species, D. moniliforme and D. nobile. Maximum entropy modeling (MaxEnt) and the ArcGIS geographic information system were used to predict the distribution of suitable habitats for these Dendrobium species, both presently and in the future, under various greenhouse gas emission models. We found that D. moniliforme and D. nobile are widely distributed in the south of China (Anhui, Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Hunan provinces). Worldwide, Japan and North Korea were identified as major distribution areas for D. moniliforme and D. nobile. Based on the MaxEnt model, the mean diurnal range and the minimum temperature of the coldest month were identified as the most significant bioclimatic variables controlling the distribution of D. moniliforme and D. nobile. Future climate change will likely result in an increase of suitable habitat area for D. moniliforme (by around 16%), and decrease for D. nobile (by around 1-10%), but climate change is unlikely to have much impact on the distribution of suitable habitats for D. moniliforme and D. nobile in Japan and North Korea. Based on our findings, measures should be taken to protect these precious medicinal plant resources, and the sites used for the artificial cultivation of Dendrobium will need to shift as the climate changes.
Highlights
Climate is the most important factor determining the distribution of species on Earth, and changes in species distributions reflect changes in climate (Tanaka et al, 2012; Faleiro et al, 2013; Li et al, 2013)
Here we describe the distribution of two representative Dendrobium species (D. moniliforme and D. nobile) and predict potentially suitable habitats for these species, for both current and under future climate change scenarios
In the future, under different greenhouse gas emission models, the AUC values of training and testing of the D. nobile and D. moniliforme sets both exceeded 0.975. These results show that the predicted distribution area in the current period was highly consistent with the natural distribution area, and the Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model has high credibility and accuracy in calculating suitable habitat areas for Dendrobium for current and various future periods
Summary
Climate is the most important factor determining the distribution of species on Earth, and changes in species distributions reflect changes in climate (Tanaka et al, 2012; Faleiro et al, 2013; Li et al, 2013). There have been many studies addressing the relationship between climate change and the distributions of the herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine (Szakiel et al, 2011; Li et al, 2015; Guo et al, 2016). Dendrobium species are native to China, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and other countries, Climate Change Distribution Dendrobium Habitats they are mainly distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia and Oceania; there are only 80 species and two varieties of Dendrobium in China (Wu et al, 2009; Zheng et al, 2018). The fresh or dried stems of many Dendrobium species are one of the most expensive tonics in traditional Chinese medicine, and these tonics are considered a “superior grade” herbal medicine in the ancient text “Shen Nong’s Herbal Classic” (Xu et al, 2013). The world’s medicinal Dendrobium is almost exclusively sourced from the wild. Indiscriminate collection is destroying the natural environment that Dendrobium depends on
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