Climate change will threaten endemic frogs in the Araucaria Forests of South America

Abstract

Climate change threatens ecosystem dynamics and species with extinction. Endemic species with restricted geographic distribution are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and land use. Using a geographic distribution modeling approach with two future projections in time (years 2050 and 2080), two scenarios (lowest and highest carbon emissions), and land use, we predicted the trends in changing climatic areas for the future geographic distributions of seven species of endemic frogs in the Araucaria Forest of southeastern Brazil. Our results indicate that all species will lose important fractions, from 35–100%, of their current climatically suitable areas over the next 50 years. The impact of land use, on average, was 76% on all climatically suitable areas. Refugia and climatically suitable areas for all species will tend to move south, towards the current southern and easternmost areas of Araucaria Forest. Only a small fraction (3–10%) of the remaining climatically suitable areas will be within conservation units. Thus, climate change will bring severe reduction in area, and the area will move further south, for these seven species of small, dispersal-limited, endemic frogs of the Atlantic Forest. Planning will be necessary to provide refugia in the near future to protect and save these species and their habitats.