A global risk assessment of primates under climate and land use/cover scenarios

Abstract

Primates are facing an impending extinction crisis, driven by extensive habitat loss, land use change and hunting. Climate change is an additional threat, which alone or in combination with other drivers, may severely impact those taxa unable to track suitable environmental conditions. Here, we investigate the extent of climate and land use/cover (LUC) change‐related risks for primates. We employed an analytical approach to objectively select a subset of climate scenarios, for which we then calculated changes in climatic and LUC conditions for 2050 across primate ranges (N = 426 species) under a best‐case scenario and a worst‐case scenario. Generalized linear models were used to examine whether these changes varied according to region, conservation status, range extent and dominant habitat. Finally, we reclassified primate ranges based on different magnitudes of maximum temperature change, and quantified the proportion of ranges overall and of primate hotspots in particular that are likely to be exposed to extreme temperature increases. We found that, under the worst‐case scenario, 74% of Neotropical forest‐dwelling primates are likely to be exposed to maximum temperature increases up to 7°C. In contrast, 38% of Malagasy savanna primates will experience less pronounced warming of up to 3.5°C. About one quarter of Asian and African primates will face up to 50% crop expansion within their range. Primary land (undisturbed habitat) is expected to disappear across species' ranges, whereas secondary land (disturbed habitat) will increase by up to 98%. With 86% of primate ranges likely to be exposed to maximum temperature increases >3°C, primate hotspots in the Neotropics are expected to be particularly vulnerable. Our study highlights the fundamental exposure risk of a large percentage of primate ranges to predicted climate and LUC changes. Importantly, our findings underscore the urgency with which climate change mitigation measures need to be implemented to avert primate extinctions on an unprecedented scale.

Primate life history, social dynamics, ecology, and conservation: Contributions from long‐term research in Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica

“…When considered in a comparative context with other primate species and populations around the world, such data provide invaluable information for modeling the impact of climate change and extreme weather events in tropical environments (Campos et al, 2017;Carvalho et al, 2019;Graham et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2019).…”

Predicting range shifts of African apes under global change scenarios

“…high mitigation scenario, CCSM4 RCP 4.5) and a worst-case scenario (i.e. low mitigation scenario, HadGEM-ES RCP 8.5) (for more details see (Carvalho et al, 2019)). Land-use/cover data for current conditions and 2050 projections were compiled from the Land-use Harmonization Project (period of 1500-2100, Table S1.1, (Chini, Hurtt, & Frolking, 2014;Hurtt et al, 2011)).…”

“…This dataset represents a set of land-use change and emission scenarios for studies of human impact on the past and future global carbon-climate system. Again, we considered a best-case scenario (MiniCam RCP 4.5) and a worst-case scenario (MESSAGE RCP 8.5) (Carvalho et al, 2019).…”

“…It exposes many species, especially forest-dwelling primates, to climatically unsuitable conditions (Carvalho et al, 2019). Primates have relatively limited dispersal abilities for their body size, slow reproduction, low population densities, dietary requirements and poor thermoregulation, and a predicted reduction of up to 86% of the Neotropical primate ranges with >3ºC warming is likely to constrain their dispersal, resulting in elevated risks of extinction (Carvalho et al, 2019 (Junker et al, 2012) as well as large population losses (Kuehl et al, 2017;Plumptre et al, 2016;Strindberg et al, 2018) caused by human activities and/or infectious epidemics (Walsh et al, 2003). Many African apes live in areas that are suitable for agricultural expansion and 58.7% of oil-palm concessions currently overlap with African ape ranges (Wich et al, 2014).…”

Species distribution modeling and conservation assessment of the black-headed night monkey (Aotus nigriceps) – A species of Least Concern that faces widespread anthropogenic threats

“…This is concerning since large portions of its range overlap with areas experiencing some of the highest deforestation rates in the world (Estrada et al, 2018). Besides habitat loss, their long-term viability is also projected to be further impacted by altered phenology and increased average maximum temperatures from climate change, which will force species to adapt their distribution or face increased risk from extinction (e.g., Raghunathan et al, 2014; Cohn et al, 2019; Carvalho et al, 2019a).…”