The fate of the endemic insects of the Andean Region under the effect of global warming

MONTEMAYOR, S. I., SCATOLLINI, M. C., MELO, M. C., DELLAPÉ, P., POCCO, M. E., DELLAPÉ, G., SCHEIBLER, E.E., CAZORLA, C.G., DEL RÍO, M.G., ROIG, S.A.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Evento: 35th Annual Meeting of the Willi Hennig Society and XII Reunión Argentina de Cladística y Biogeografía.; 2016

Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia", CONICET

The present study uses Ecological NicheModels to recognize areas of high species richness for three time periods(Pleistocene, Holocene and Present) in the Andean Region. Furthermore, we recoveredthose areas, refugia, that retained suitable climatic conditions enablinglong-term persistence of the biodiversity and analyzed the evolution of the potentialdistributional area of each species to identify those that could be at risk byglobal warming. We analyzed 59 insect species of five orders (Coleoptera,Diptera, Heteroptera, Odonata, and Orthoptera) endemic of the Andean Region. Weused Maxentv3.3.3k., over 1,070 records and  the 19 WorldClim bioclimatic variables of (2.5minutes resolution) to build niche models; and CCSM4General Circulation Model to model the past. We calculated Levin?sconcentration metrics (implemented in ENMTools) to only include species with anarrow niche breadth. Spatial biases were filtered using Moran?s I test atmultiple distance classes (SAM v4.0.). Models were validated using thejackknife methodology designed for small datasets.Three lowland and one high mountain refugia wererecognized showing a high congruence with refugia proposed in previous studiesfor plants and vertebrates. From the 59 studied species, 31 showed a retractionof their potential distribution from Pleistocene to Present suggesting theirpreference to colder environments. As the effect of the global warming isparticularly evident in taxa of cold environments, the distribution of manyspecies from Andean Region would be strongly affected in the near future.