Abstract
Biodiversity hotspots host a high diversity of narrowly distributed endemic species, which are increasingly threatened by climate change. In eastern North America, the highest concentration of plant diversity and endemism occurs in the Southern Appalachian Mountains (SAM). It has been hypothesized that this region served as a refugium during Pleistocene glacial cycles and that postglacial migration northward was dispersal limited. We tested this hypothesis using species distribution models for eight forest herb species. We also quantified the extent to which the geography of suitable habitat shifted away from the current range with climate change. We developed species distribution models for four forest herb species endemic to the SAM and four that co-occur in the same SAM habitats but have broader ranges. For widespread species, we built models using (1) all occurrences and (2) only those that overlap the SAM hotspot in order to evaluate the extent of Hutchinsonian shortfalls and the potential for models to predict suitable habitat beyond the SAM. We evaluated the extent to which predicted climatically suitable areas are projected to shift away from their current ranges under future climate change. We detected unoccupied but suitable habitat in regions up to 1,100 km north of the endemic species’ ranges. Endemic ranges are disjunct from suitable northern areas due to a ∼100–150 km gap of unsuitable habitat. Under future climate change, models predicted severe reductions in suitable habitat within current endemic ranges. For non-endemic species, we found similar overall patterns and gap of unsuitability in the same geographic location. Our results suggest a history of dispersal limitation following the last glacial maximum along with an environmental barrier to northward migration. Conservation of endemic species would likely require intervention and assisted migration to suitable habitat in northern New England and Canada.
Highlights
Understanding the abiotic, biotic, and historical factors that have shaped species’ current geographic distributions is crucial for predicting how species might respond to modern climate change
As a point of comparison, we developed species distribution models (SDMs) for four more widespread forest herb species from the Appalachian Mountains that overlap in range with the Southern Appalachian Mountains (SAM) endemics but extend further north
We focused on eight species of herbaceous flowering plants whose ranges overlap in the forests of the Southern Appalachian Mountains (SAM: Figure 1)
Summary
Understanding the abiotic, biotic, and historical factors that have shaped species’ current geographic distributions is crucial for predicting how species might respond to modern climate change. Similar range shifts are well-documented for past climate variation associated with glacial cycles (Betancourt et al, 1990; Jackson and Overpeck, 2000) It is unclear if all species share this capacity for rapid migration, especially given the more rapid pace of contemporary climate change (Svenning and Skov, 2004, 2005; Dullinger et al, 2012). Those facing geographical barriers to colonization of disjunct suitable habitat, the realized distribution might only partly fill the full extent of the species’ potential distribution (“poor range-filling capacity,” Svenning and Skov, 2004) Species tending toward the latter scenario represent a significant challenge for conservation in the face of modern climate change, as their distributions might already show longterm “disequilibrium” with the environment, and rapid and commensurate adjustments to further change might be unlikely
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