Abstract
AbstractAimFuture climate changes may affect species distribution and their genetic diversity, hampering species adaptation to a new climate or tracking the suitable conditions. Amphibians have high sensitivity to environmental degradation and changes in temperature and humidity. Thus, the expected climatic changes by the end‐of‐century (EOC 2100) may cause local or complete extinction of some species. Here, we address the effects of climate change on genetic and phylogeographical diversity, together with the geographical distribution of the South American treefrog Scinax squalirostris Lutz, 1925. Furthermore, we assess how protected areas will conserve its genetic variation.LocationSouth America.MethodsWe combined Ecological Niche Modelling and genetic simulations to predict the effects of climate change on the geographical distribution, genetic diversity, structure and phylogeographical diversity of Scinax squalirostris, using two scenarios of CO2 emission. We also performed a spatial analysis to investigate the effectiveness of the current Protected Areas (PAs) to preserve the species’ genetic and phylogeographical diversity.ResultsScinax squalirostris' geographical range will potentially increase in the future due to the expansion of suitable areas towards its southern distribution, despite the shrinking of suitable areas in the northern part of its current distribution. Besides the shifts in suitable areas, our findings point to a genetic homogenization across the geographical range of S. squalirostris due to the displacement and loss of genetic ancestry clusters. Although existing PAs are conserving the current genetic diversity, they conserve less phylogeographical diversity than expected by chance. Scinax squalirostris may shift its distribution into areas with lower number of PAs, compromising its future conservation.Main conclusionsClimate change will potentially increase S. squalirostris range size, however, not towards regions where most of the current established PAs are located, hence driving to homogenization and loss of genetic diversity, and leading to a gap of conservation within PAs.
Highlights
Anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity such as habitat fragmentation, invasive species, hunting pressures and climate changes have been associated with current species extinctions (Bellard et al, 2016; Fahrig, 2003; Loyola et al, 2014; Purvis et al, 2000)
Because most of sampled populations were outside Protected Areas (PAs), we applied a kriging interpolation of the genetic richness and Phylogeographical Diversity (PGeoD) onto a raster of the current species distribution predicted by the Ecological Niche Modelling (ENM), with a resolution of 0.5o (Figure S4 in Appendix S4)
Our findings suggest that climate change can potentially affect S. squalirostris, leading to an expansion of the geographical range towards southern South America, but a retraction in the northern part of its range
Summary
Anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity such as habitat fragmentation, invasive species, hunting pressures and climate changes have been associated with current species extinctions (Bellard et al, 2016; Fahrig, 2003; Loyola et al, 2014; Purvis et al, 2000). Because amphibians rely heavily on environmental conditions (Duellman & Trueb, 1994), climate change is expected to cause the extinction of around 40% of the amphibian species, with greater impact on endemic groups (Foden et al, 2013; Gibbons et al, 2000; Thomas et al, 2004), making them the most threatened group of animals (Mendelson et al, 2006; Stuart et al, 2004). The South American treefrog Scinax squalirostris Lutz, 1925 is a model group to study the impact of climate change on South American herpetofauna because of its wide distribution throughout the central-west, southeast and south of South America (Figure 1; Frost, 2021) It inhabits diverse habitats such as open formations, forests, grasslands and rushes. We perform a clustering analysis of the current genetic and phylogeographical diversity to analyse their conservation within the current Protection Areas (PAs) scheme
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