Projected impacts of climate change on habitat availability for an endangered parakeet

PLoS One. 2018 Jan 24;13(1):e0191773. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191773. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

In tropical montane cloud forests, climate change can cause upslope shifts in the distribution ranges of species, leading to reductions in distributional range. Endemic species with small ranges are particularly vulnerable to such decreases in range size, as the population size may be reduced significantly. To ensure the survival of cloud forest species in the long term, it is crucial to quantify potential future shifts in their distribution ranges and the related changes in habitat availability in order to assure the long-term effectiveness of conservation measures. In this study, we assessed the influence of climate change on the availability of forested habitat for the endemic El Oro parakeet. We investigated the future range shift by modelling the climatic niche of the El Oro parakeets and projecting it to four different climate change scenarios. Depending on the intensity of climate change, the El Oro parakeets shift their range between 500 and 1700 m uphill by the year 2100. On average, the shift is accompanied by a reduction in range size to 15% and a reduction in forested habitat to only 10% of the original extent. Additionally, the connectivity between populations in different areas is decreasing in higher altitudes. To prevent a population decline due to habitat loss following an upslope range shift, it will be necessary to restore habitat across a large elevational span in order to allow for movement of El Oro parakeets into higher altitudes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Altitude
  • Animals
  • Biodiversity
  • Climate Change*
  • Conservation of Natural Resources
  • Ecosystem
  • Ecuador
  • Endangered Species* / trends
  • Forests
  • Models, Biological
  • Parakeets*
  • Tropical Climate

Grants and funding

This work was funded by Loro Parque Foundation, by DFG (Scha 1008/7-1), and by NSF through the Network for Sustainable Climate Risk Management (SCRiM) under NSF cooperative agreement GEO-1240507 as well as the Penn State Center for Climate Risk Management. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.