Aim:Artemisia annua L. is the one and only original
plant used to isolate artemisinin which is a highly effective remedy to
fight malaria. Climate change leads to change of distribution and
suitable range for many species and A. annua is no exception.
However, it is not clear that the potential distribution and suitable
range change of this unique plant under climate change. Therefore, we
present this research to study its change in the future.
Location: Global. Methods: Since the accuracy of
species distribution models was affected by occurrence records and
environmental variables, 1062 presence records and 7 variables were
picked out to build ensemble models with 10 different algorithms by
means of biomod2 under current and future climate scenarios.
Results: At present, except SRE, the AUC values of the rest
models were greater than 0.8, and the TSS values were greater than 0.6,
the values of ensemble model were 0.968 and 0.826 respectively. Mean
temperature of driest quarter was the dominant factor to shape the range
of A. annua and its optimum interval ranged from 4.8 to 23.3ºC.
The high suitable habitats of A. annua were mainly located in
Eastern Asia, Western Europe, Central Europe. In the future, the high
suitable area would decline at 15.55% to 25.87%. Main
conclusions: Ensemble models showed it performed better than any the
single one. At present, the high suitable habitat simulated by ensemble
model was in accordance with the actual occurrence records. In the
future, the high suitable habitat for A. annua would move
northeast, and disappear in North America. They would increase with time
under each SSP, but sharply decline while comparing with the current
one. This study can be used to protect wild resource and guide
cultivation for A. annua, which would make modest contribution to
fight malaria.