Herpetological Journal FULL PAPER
Volume 29 (April 2019), 71-81 Herpetological Journal FULL PAPER https://doi.org/10.33256/hj29.2.7181 Published by the British Predicting Ambystoma ordinarium distribution under differentHerpetological Society climate scenarios in central Mexico Rafael Hernández-Guzmán1, Luis H. Escalera-Vázquez2 & Ireri Suazo-Ortuño3 1CONACYT – Instituto de Investigaciones sobre los Recursos Naturales, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo. Morelia, Michoacán, México 2Laboratorio de Biología Acuática, Facultad de Biología, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, edificio R, planta baja, Ciudad Universitaria. Morelia, Michoacán, México 3Instituto de Investigaciones sobre los Recursos Naturales, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo. Morelia, Michoacán, México Global climate change represents one of the most important threats to wildlife populations. Amphibians, specifically salamanders, are particularly susceptible to the effects of a changing climate due to their restrictive physiological requirements and low vagility; however, little is known about which amphibian species are more vulnerable to climate change. Therefore, we aimed to forecast changes in the distribution of the mountain stream salamander, Ambystoma ordinarium, using different climate scenarios. Approximately 70 representative presence records were selected to model the current potential distribution and two scenarios based on 2070 climate projections (RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5) using the MaxEnt algorithm and three global climate models (BCC-CSM1-1, CCSM4 and HadGEM2-ES). A total of three scenarios were simulated using the 10-percentile training presence as the threshold rule. For all scenarios, the average of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the replicated runs was greater than 0.95 ± 0.005, representing good performance for the current and projected geographical distributions of A.
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