Abstract
Akebia trifoliata (Thunb.) Koidz., Akebia trifoliata subsp. australis (Diels) T. Shimizu and Akebia quinata (Houtt.) Decne. are the source plants of the traditional Chinese medicines AKEBIAE CAULIS and AKEBIAE FRUCTUS, and have high pharmaceutical value. However, the resource reserve of these plants has dramatically declined due to habitat destruction, which has seriously affected their adequate supply and sustainable utilization. A poor knowledge of the potential distribution of these medicinal materials would seriously constrain the protective exploitation of wild resources and the establishment of new cultivations. In this study, based on the scenarios of SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5, the maximum entropy model was used to predict the potential distribution of these three Akebia taxa under current and future (2030s, 2050s, 2070s and 2090s) climate conditions. Our findings showed that the potentially suitable areas of these three Akebia taxa were mainly distributed in China at 101.8–121.9° E and 23.5–34.6° N. Temperature played a more significant role than precipitation in affecting the distribution. The dominant bioclimatic variable that affected the distribution of A. trifoliata and A. quinata in China was the minimum temperature of the coldest month (BIO06). For A. trifoliata subsp. australis, the mean diurnal range (BIO02) was the dominant variable influencing its distribution. Compared with current conditions, the moderate- and high-suitability areas of these three Akebia taxa were predicted to shrink towards the core areas, while the low-suitability areas were all observed to increase from the 2030s to the 2090s. With the increase in radiative forcing of SSP, the low-impact areas of these three Akebia taxa showed a decreasing trend as a whole. Our results illustrate the impact of climate change on the distribution of Akebia, and would provide references for the sustainable utilization of Akebia’s resources.
Highlights
Climate change is one of the crucial factors that affects the distribution of species.According to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), “Climate Change 2021: The PhysicalScience Basis”, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in August 2021, the global surface temperature was 1.09 ◦ C higher in the 2011–2020 period compared to 1850–1900 and climate change will intensify in all regions in the few decades [1]
The best models of these three species were all significant. This means that the models obtained were better than a random model. All of these suggested that the model could be used to predict the distributions of these three Akebia taxa
Our study focused on the climate suitability of these three Akebia taxa; the actual suitable areas would be smaller in the future due to the influence of other factors, e.g., soil properties and land use change [74,75]
Summary
Climate change is one of the crucial factors that affects the distribution of species.According to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), “Climate Change 2021: The PhysicalScience Basis”, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in August 2021, the global surface temperature was 1.09 ◦ C higher in the 2011–2020 period compared to 1850–1900 and climate change will intensify in all regions in the few decades [1]. Climate change is one of the crucial factors that affects the distribution of species. Research has shown that global climate change had a major impact on the distribution of species in this period [2,3]. The analysis of the characteristics of climate change from 1960 to 2018 showed that China’s precipitation presented an increasing trend [6]. Studies showed that the synergistic effects of global climate change and human activities may lead to the destruction of species’ habitats and increase the risk of species’ extinction [7]. Land use and land cover change caused by human activities has exerted great impacts on species’ distribution and climate change in China. Studies showed that human activities could promote the implementation of ecological protection measures [10].
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