Modeling species distribution under several climate change scenarios for Rhinopoma bats (Chiroptera: Rhinopomatidae) in Iran

Modeling the distribution patterns of species is a generally efficient tool for understanding their ecological characteristics. Species distribution models are widely used to predict the geographical distribution of habitat suitability and species occurrence. The objective of this study is to undertake a climate change assessment RCP2.6 (low emissions) and RCP8.5 (high emissions) future scenarios on distributions of Rhinopoma genus bat and also development of habitat-suitability analyses for these species to determine the ecogeographical variables which influence their distribution. Mapping species distribution with Maxent using geographically presence only data in climatic scenarios the model used in our study showed that most influential variables describing the distribution of this species is the precipitation seasonality. The model used in this study reached AUC range of 0.899-0.870 indicating that the selected variables described the distribution of this genus very well. Furthermore, we modeled the extent of the suitable areas under a climate change scenarios, where the results showed a potential decrease in the area of suitable habitats for the species in the future. Study area was suitable 6.71% for the species at present and under the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios of the HadGEM2-ES for the future, this area was predicted to be decreased.

کلیدواژه ها:

climate change ، suitable habitat ، Rhinopoma genus ، conservation ، scenario