Variable vulnerability to climate change in New Zealand lizards

Abstract

Aim:The primary drivers of species and population extirpations have been habitat loss, overexploitation and invasive species, but human-mediated climate change is expected to be a major driver in future. To minimise biodiversity loss, conservation managers should identify species vulnerable to climate change and prioritise their protection. Here, we estimate climatic suitability for two species-rich taxonomic groups, then use phylogenetic analyses to assess vulnerability to climate change.Location: Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ).Taxa: NZ lizards: diplodactylid geckos and eugongylinae skinks. Methods:We built correlative species distribution models (SDMs) for NZ geckos and skinks to estimate climatic suitability under current climate and 2070 future climate scenarios. We then used Bayesian phylogenetic mixed models (BPMMs) to assess vulnerability for both groups with predictor variables for life-history traits (body size and activity phase) and current distribution (elevation and latitude). We explored two scenarios: an unlimited dispersal scenario, where projections track climate, and a nodispersal scenario, where projections are restricted to areas currently identified as suitable.Results: SDMs projected vulnerability to climate change for most modelled lizards. For species' ranges projected to decline in climatically suitable areas, average decreases were between 42% and 46% for geckos and 33% and 52% for skinks, although area did increase or remain stable for a minority of species. For the no-dispersal scenario, the average decrease for geckos was 37%-52% and for skinks was 33%-52%. Our BPMMs showed phylogenetic signal in climate change vulnerability for both groups, with elevation increasing vulnerability for geckos, and body size reducing vulnerability for skinks.Main conclusions: New Zealand lizards showed variable vulnerability to climate change, with most species' ranges predicted to decrease. For species whose suitable climatic space is projected to disappear from within their current range, managed relocation could be considered to establish populations in regions that will be suitable under future climates.

Extreme tolerance for nocturnal emergence at low body temperatures in a high-latitude lizard: implications for future climate warming

“…However, the long-term consequences of increased climate heating (including the potential for harmful extremes of temperature) on activity timing, increase in winter rainfall and other important aspects of natural history including maternal gestation length and offspring phenotypic traits, remain unclear. Recent finding suggested that lizards at higher elevation will experience greater impact of climate change due to decrease in habitat availability especially for our study species ( Jarvie et al, 2022 ); but consequences of increased warming may not be enormous when microclimate properties and lizards’ biology are considered ( Chukwuka et al, 2021 ). In addition, the potential for increased vulnerability to predation while emerging ( Wilson and Cooke, 2004 ; Sperry et al, 2010 ), including from introduced mammals, which themselves will be impacted by climate change, will be important to address.…”

Predicting range shifts of the giant pandas under future climate and land use scenarios

“…Moreover, recent studies suggested that the tuned MaxEnt models can perform comparably to ensemble SDMs (Hao et al, 2020 ; Low et al, 2021 ). To improve the performance of MaxEnt and avoid overfitting, following Jarvie et al ( 2021 ), we ran 24 Maxent models based on all possible combinations of eight regularization multipliers (i.e., 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, and 4) and three feature class options (i.e., linear, linear/quadratic, and linear/quadratic/product). The performance of each model was evaluated using a non‐spatial fivefold cross‐validation.…”

Large variability in response to future climate and land‐use changes among Chinese Theaceae species

“…Moreover, recent studies suggest that the interacting effects of climate and land‐use change are complex and species‐specific, for they could either amplify or buffer the isolated impact of a single factor for a certain species (Auffret & Thomas, 2019 ; Radinger et al, 2016 ). Therefore, to avoid further biodiversity loss, conservationists need to identify species likely to be vulnerable to global change, which requires improved estimations of species' range shifts under the combination of climate and land use change scenarios (Jarvie et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Therefore, to avoid further biodiversity loss, conservationists need to identify species likely to be vulnerable to global change, which requires improved estimations of species' range shifts under the combination of climate and land use change scenarios (Jarvie et al, 2022).…”