Synergistic effects of climate change and habitat fragmentation on species range shifts and metapopulation persistence

Frederico Mestre

doi:10.21425/f59435859

Abstract

The effects of climate and landscape change on biodiversity are relatively well described. However, there is limited understanding of the interactions between these processes, which generally operate at differing spatial scales. My objective was to evaluate the synergistic effects of climate and landscape changes on persistence and range shift dynamics. The model species was the Cabrera vole, Microtus cabrerae, a habitat specialist with limited dispersal ability. The present study demonstrated that, as a result of the combined effects of climate and landscape change, this species’ future potential distribution will be considerably reduced. The combined effect of climate change and landscape connectivity was assessed using the software MetaLandSim, a newly developed package, with a good balance between data requirements and output quality, allowing researchers to account for connectivity and dispersal in range forecasting. With this R package, the species’ metapopulational dynamics could be simulated at the landscape scale, and range expansion for different connectivity scenarios could be computed.

Highlights

Climate change raises considerable concerns for biodiversity conservation
Quantifying the joint impacts of climate and landscape change can be achieved by combining spatially explicit dispersal models (SEDMs) with predictions of future potential distributions obtained from Ecological Niche Models (ENMs; Franklin 2010, Naujokaitis-Lewis et al 2013)
Earlier work looking into the interplay between landscape and climate change by Travis (2003) suggested that there are essentially two distinct thresholds below which species go extinct, one related to habitat availability, and the other related to the rate of climate change

Summary

Introduction

Climate change raises considerable concerns for biodiversity conservation. The main effects on biodiversity include range shifts and contraction, changes in phenologies, and/or disruptions to ecological networks (Parmesan 2006, Parmesan and Yohe 2003, Walther et al 2002). Landscape modification by humans is a major factor in biodiversity reduction worldwide (e.g., Fahrig 2003, Lindenmayer and Fischer 2006). Both threats are expected to be damaging for habitat specialists with poor colonization and dispersal abilities (Jiguet et al 2007, Schloss et al 2012, Pacifici et al 2017). Earlier work looking into the interplay between landscape and climate change by Travis (2003) suggested that there are essentially two distinct thresholds below which species go extinct, one related to habitat availability, and the other related to the rate of climate change. Because the position of the second threshold is influenced by the amount of available habitat, the two processes are connected in the probability of species extinction. Opdam and Wascher (2004) confirmed this idea by identifying two thresholds: one where the level of fragmentation still allows persistence and range expansion at slow rates, and another above which the expansion of the range is inhibited. Hof et al (2011) go further, by demonstrating that the crucial difference between current and Frontiers of Biogeography 2018, 9.4, e35859

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