Species, taxonomic, and functional group diversities of terrestrial mammals at risk under climate change and land‐use/cover change scenarios in Mexico

Abstract

There is a need to revise the framework used to project species risks under climate change (CC) and land‐use/cover change (LUCC) scenarios. We built a CC risk index using the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change framework, where risk is a function of vulnerability (sensitivity and adaptive capacity), exposure, and hazard. We incorporated future LUCC scenarios as part of the exposure component. We combined a trait‐based approach based on biological characteristics of species with a correlative approach based on ecological niche modeling, assigning risk scores to species, taxonomic (orders), and functional (trophic, body size, and locomotion) groups of terrestrial mammals occurring in Mexico. We identified 15 species projected to lose their climatic suitability. Of the 11 taxonomic orders, Eulipotyphla, Didelphimorphia, Artiodactyla, and Lagomorpha had the highest risk scores. Of the 19 trophic groups, piscivores, insectivores under canopy, frugivores–granivores, herbivores browser, and myrmecophagous had the highest risk scores. Of the five body‐sized groups, large‐sized species (>15 kg) had highest risk scores. Of the seven locomotion groups, arboreal and semi‐aquatics had highest risk scores. CC and LUCC scenarios reduced suitable areas of species potential distributions by 37.5% (with CC), and 51% (with CC and LUCC) under a limited full‐dispersal assumption. Reductions in suitable areas of species potential distributions increased to 50.2% (with CC), and 52.4% (with CC and LUCC) under a non‐dispersal assumption. Species‐rich areas (>75% species) projected 36% (with CC) and 57% (with CC and LUCC) reductions in suitability for 2070. Shifts in climatic suitability projections of species‐rich areas increased in number of species in northeast and southeast Mexico and decreased in northwest and southern Mexico, suggesting important species turnover. High‐risk projections under future CC and LUCC scenarios for species, taxonomic, and functional group diversities, and species‐rich areas of terrestrial mammals highlight trends in different impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem function.

Potential distribution of marsupials (Didelphimorphia: Didelphidae) in Mexico under 2 climate change scenarios

“…different scenarios arising from different laboratories, uncertainty in time series), degree of knowledge of the analyzed species (number of occurrences), data quality, and parameter selection (Peterson et al 2018; Sillero et al 2021). However, the trend in predicted range loss for Mexican didelphid marsupials is evident and agrees with other studies (Ureta et al 2022; Lara-Díaz et al 2023).…”

“…Although C. derbianus was the only species that presented a net gain in area of distribution in the optimistic near future (RCP 4.5 for 2050), under the rest of the scenarios it presented a drastic loss of area of distribution, which is consistent with the results obtained by Ureta et al (2022), where they report this species together with C. minimus as the most threatened marsupials of Mexico.…”

“…In Mexico, we can highlight regions with higher species richness, such as the southeast, which hosts the 9 marsupials reported for the country. This region also coincides with one of the greatest species richness areas for mammals and other taxonomic groups, particularly in the region of southern Veracruz, northern Oaxaca, and Chiapas (Escalante et al 2002; Ureta et al 2022). The species richness in southeastern Mexico is directly related to the great heterogeneity of the physical environment as product of a very complex geological and climatic history (Morrone 2019).…”

Prioritizing conservation efforts based on future habitat availability and accessibility under climate change

“…To reduce sampling bias and spatial autocorrelation related to oversampling, we removed duplicate geographic locations for each species and used R package spThin (Aiello‐Lammens et al., 2015) to filter the data set to match the resolution of the climate variable layers used (5×5 km grids); 1 record was kept per grid. Furthermore, we included only those species with at least 25 unique records in the model because this threshold is useful for generating robust distribution models (Hernandez et al., 2006; Pearson et al., 2007; Proosdij et al., 2016; Ureta et al., 2022). Ultimately, 9489 unique occurrence records of migratory birds ( n = 104 species) were retained for subsequent analyses (Appendices S3a, S5, & S6).…”

Impacts of climate change and habitat loss on the distribution of the endangered crested capuchin monkey (Sapajus robustus)

“…Negative impacts of climate change include degradation of climatic conditions in current geographic ranges (Galat et al, 2009; Gregory et al, 2012), distribution shifts (Schloss et al, 2012), and contraction of suitable areas (Gutiérrez et al, 2019). For instance, areas with a high richness of mammal species may decline by 36%, and reductions in their distributions could reach up to 50.2% due to climate change (Ureta et al, 2022). One out of six species is predicted to be threatened by climate change, and the highest extinction risk is expected for South America (23%) (Urban, 2015).…”