Kumari Priyanka, Wani Ishfaq Ahmad, Khan Sajid, Verma Susheel, Mushtaq Shazia, Gulnaz Aneela, Paray Bilal Ahamad
Conservation and Molecular Biology Laboratory, Department of Botany, Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University Rajouri, Jammu and Kashmir 185234, India.
Department of Botany, University of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir 180001, India.
Biology (Basel). 2022 Mar 24;11(4):498. doi: 10.3390/biology11040498.
An increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases necessitates the use of species distribution models (SDMs) in modeling suitable habitats and projecting the impact of climate change on the future range shifts of the species. The present study is based on the BIOMOD ensemble approach to map the currently suitable habitats and predict the impact of climate change on the niche shift of Valeriana wallichii. We also studied its niche dynamics using the ecospat package in R software. Values of the area under curve (AUC) and true skill statistics (TSS) were highly significant (>0.9), which shows that the model has run better. From 19 different bioclimatic variables, only 8 were retained after correlation, among which bio_17 (precipitation of driest quarter), bio_1 (annual mean temperature), and bio_12 (annual mean precipitation) received the highest gain. Under future climate change, the suitable habitats will be significantly contracted by −94% (under representative concentration pathway RCP 8.5 for 2070) and −80.22% (under RCP 8.5 for 2050). There is a slight increase in habitat suitability by +16.69% (RCP 4.5 for 2050) and +8.9% (RCP 8.5 for 2050) under future climate change scenarios. The equivalency and similarity tests of niche dynamics show that the habitat suitability for current and future climatic scenarios is comparable but not identical. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) analysis shows that climatic conditions will be severely affected between current and future scenarios. From this study, we conclude that the habitats of Valeriana wallichii are highly vulnerable to climate shifts. This study can be used to alleviate the threat to this plant by documenting the unexplored populations, restoring the degraded habitats through rewilding, and launching species recovery plans in the natural habitats.
大气中温室气体的增加使得有必要使用物种分布模型（SDMs）来模拟适宜栖息地，并预测气候变化对物种未来分布范围变化的影响。本研究基于BIOMOD集成方法来绘制当前适宜栖息地的地图，并预测气候变化对缬草生态位转移的影响。我们还使用R软件中的ecospat包研究了其生态位动态。曲线下面积（AUC）和真实技能统计（TSS）值非常显著（>0.9），这表明模型运行良好。在19个不同的生物气候变量中，相关性分析后仅保留了8个，其中bio_17（最干季度降水量）、bio_1（年平均温度）和bio_12（年平均降水量）的增益最高。在未来气候变化下，适宜栖息地将显著收缩，到2070年在代表性浓度路径RCP 8.5下收缩94%，到2050年在RCP 8.5下收缩80.22%。在未来气候变化情景下，栖息地适宜性略有增加，到2050年在RCP 4.5下增加16.69%，在RCP 8.5下增加8.9%。生态位动态的等效性和相似性测试表明，当前和未来气候情景下的栖息地适宜性具有可比性但不完全相同。主成分分析（PCA）表明，当前和未来情景之间的气候条件将受到严重影响。从本研究中，我们得出结论，缬草的栖息地极易受到气候变化的影响。本研究可用于通过记录未被探索的种群、通过野化恢复退化的栖息地以及在自然栖息地启动物种恢复计划来减轻对这种植物的威胁。
