Abstract

Global warming is likely leading to species’ distributional shifts, resulting in changes in local community compositions and diversity patterns. In this study, we applied species distribution models to evaluate the potential impacts of temperature increase on ant communities in Korean temperate forests, by testing hypotheses that 1) the risk of extinction of forest ant species would increase over time, and 2) the changes in species distribution ranges could drive upward movements of ant communities and further alter patterns of species richness. We sampled ant communities at 335 evenly distributed sites across South Korea and modelled the future distribution range for each species using generalized additive models. To account for spatial autocorrelation, autocovariate regressions were conducted prior to generalized additive models. Among 29 common ant species, 12 species were estimated to shrink their suitable geographic areas, whereas five species would benefit from future global warming. Species richness was highest at low altitudes in the current period, and it was projected to be highest at the mid-altitudes in the 2080s, resulting in an upward movement of 4.9 m yr−1. This altered the altitudinal pattern of species richness from a monotonic-decrease curve (common in temperate regions) to a bell-shaped curve (common in tropical regions). Overall, ant communities in temperate forests are vulnerable to the on-going global warming and their altitudinal movements are similar to other faunal communities.

Highlights

  • Global warming has produced clear fingerprints on biosphere [1,2,3,4]

  • We developed species distribution models to further evaluate the potential impacts of temperature increase on the risk of extinctions and upward movements of ant species in the context of community and aimed to test the following hypotheses: 1) the risk of extinction of forest ant species would increase over time, and 2) the changes in ant species distribution ranges could drive upward movements of ant species and further alter the patterns of species richness

  • We estimated the future risk of extinction and upward movement of Korean ant species in response to the A1B emission scenario

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Summary

Introduction

Global warming has produced clear fingerprints on biosphere [1,2,3,4]. To cope with warming effects, the poleward and upward shifts in species’ distributional ranges have been increasingly observed across a wide range of taxonomic groups, e.g., plants, insects, birds, and benthic invertebrates [1, 5,6,7,8,9]. The range shifts caused by global warming would radically shape the PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0159795. Effects of Global Warming on Ant Communities change on forest ecosystem and adaptation of forest ecosystem) The range shifts caused by global warming would radically shape the PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0159795 August 9, 2016

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