Nowhere to Invade: Rumex crispus and Typha latifolia Projected to Disappear under Future Climate Scenarios

Abstract

Future climate change has been predicted to affect the potential distribution of plant species. However, only few studies have addressed how invasive species may respond to future climate change despite the known effects of plant species invasion on nutrient cycles, ecosystem functions, and agricultural yields. In this study, we predicted the potential distributions of two invasive species, Rumex crispus and Typha latifolia, under current and future (2050) climatic conditions. Future climate scenarios considered in our study include A1B, A2, A2A, B1, and B2A. We found that these two species will lose their habitat under the A1B, A2, A2A, and B1 scenarios. Their distributions will be maintained under future climatic conditions related to B2A scenarios, but the total area will be less than 10% of that under the current climatic condition. We also investigated variations of the most influential climatic variables that are likely to cause habitat loss of the two species. Our results demonstrate that rising mean annual temperature, variations of the coldest quarter, and precipitation of the coldest quarter are the main factors contributing to habitat loss of R. crispus. For T. latifolia, the main factors are rising mean annual temperature, variations in temperature of the coldest quarter, mean annual precipitation, and precipitation of the coldest quarter. These results demonstrate that the warmer and wetter climatic conditions of the coldest season (or month) will be mainly responsible for habitat loss of R. crispus and T. latifolia in the future. We also discuss uncertainties related to our study (and similar studies) and suggest that particular attention should be directed toward the manner in which invasive species cope with rapid climate changes because evolutionary change can be rapid for species that invade new areas.

Abiotic mediation of a mutualism drives herbivore abundance

“…Xu et al . ), range expansion with climate change (Hijmans & Graham ), and extinction due to habitat loss (e.g. Barrows et al .…”

Morpho-histological development of the somatic embryos of Typha domingensis

“…Nonetheless, this emergent rooted macrophyte is of environmental value because it sequesters and stores carbon from the atmosphere, provides critical habitats that sustain high biodiversity, and purifies eutrophic and polluted waters ( Thorp, Thoms & Delong, 2006 ; Mitsch et al, 2013 ; Harrison et al, 2017 ). However, its populations are threatened by fragmentation, land-use changes, control measures in agricultural practices, and exploitation as a raw material in the production of biofuel ( Thorp, Thoms & Delong, 2006 ; Erwin, 2009 ; Liu et al, 2012 ; Mora-Olivo, Villaseñor & Martínez, 2013 ; Xu et al, 2013 ; Palomeque-De La Cruz et al, 2017 ). These pressures justify the development of a sustainable means of T. domingensis production to preserve its environmental services and benefits ( Liu et al, 2012 ; He et al, 2015 ), such as a method of propagation that enables T. domingensis extraction independent from the natural environment.…”

Insights from modeling studies on how climate change affects invasive alien species geography

“…However, such studies are restricted to a single species or taxa. Some have conducted that climate change increases the area occupied by IAS (Barbet-Massin et al, 2013;Gilioli, Pasquali, Parisi, & Winter, 2014;Kriticos, Sutherst, Brown, Adkins, & Maywald, 2003), while others show that climate change limits IAS distributions (Bellard et al, 2013;Bradley, Oppenheimer, & Wilcove, 2009;Xu, Feng, Yang, Zheng, & Zhang, 2013). Moreover, the multiplicity of species studied, the variable approaches used, and the resulting variability in projections make it difficult to get a clear picture of the future effects of climate change on invasions.…”