Assessment of climatically suitable area for Syrmaticus reevesii under climate change

Abstract

Global climate change is one of the major threats to biodiversity. Global warming caused by the excess emission of greenhouse gases affects the distribution and physiology of species, and threatens their survival. Thus, predicting and evaluating the consequences of changing climates on species’ distributions is important for biodiversity conservation. The goal of our study was to assess the influence of future climate scenarios on the extent and geographic location of climatically suitable areas for Reeves’s pheasant Syrmaticus reevesii, a species endemic to China, using geographic information systems and ecological niche modeling techniques. We compared model prediction under present climate with the species’ historical range and land-cover data, both of which enable a plausible assessment of present-day climatically suitable areas for the species. The areas predicted suitable under future climates showed differences among emission scenarios, but several common trends emerged. Specifically, our results indicated that future climatically suitable area for S. reevesii would decrease and shift to higher altitudes, and the geographic centroids of the climatically suitable areas would mainly move northwest. Additionally, we assessed future changes of climatically suitable areas in the nature reserves where S. reevesii is known to occur, and provided suggestions for conserving the species under climate change scenarios.