The fate of giant panda and its sympatric mammals under future climate change
Junfeng Tang, Jian Zhang, Xuzhe Zhao, Wei Wei, Mingsheng Hong, Hong Zhou, Jindong Zhang, Zejun Zhang
Abstract
Assessing the vulnerability of biodiversity under global climate change is one of the major tasks in ecology and conservation biology. Although species' vulnerability to climate change depends on habitat exposure, species sensitivity and adaptability, multifaceted studies on the impacts of climate change on biodiversity are still lacking. The aim of this study was to fill this gap by assessing the vulnerability of giant panda with its sympatric mammal species in Sichuan province of China, through the climate niche factor analysis. We found that species sensitivity plays a greater role than habitat exposure in determining the vulnerability of these species under future climate change, which doesn't closely match their current conservation status. Besides, these mammals were predicted to be more vulnerable at lower altitudes or latitudes. In particular, Daxiangling and Liangshan mountains emerge as the most vulnerable places to climate change. The conservation gap analysis demonstrated that the current protected area network covers no more than 5 % of the most vulnerable areas. Together, these results highlight the importance of using multifaceted analyses by integrating species sensitivity and habitat exposure to assess climate-related risks to better inform biodiversity conservation and management.