CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Global Climate Change (GCC) affects the distributions of ectotherms and may be the cause of several conservation problems, such as great displacement of climatic suitable spaces for species and, consequently, important reductions of the extent of livable places, threatening the existence of many of them. Species exposure (and hence vulnerability) to GCC is linked to features of their climatic niches (such as the relative position of the inhabited localities of each species in the climatic space), and therefore to characteristics of their geographic ranges (such as the extent of the distributions or altitudinal range inhabited by the species). In order to analyze the pattern of response of Argentine reptiles to GCC, we ran Phylogenetic Generalized Least Squares Models using species exposure to GCC as a response variable, and (a) niche properties (breadth and position of the species in the climate space), and (b) general features of the distribution of species (maximum latitude, altitudinal range, maximum elevation, distributional range and proximity to the most important dispersal barrier), as predictors. Our results suggest that the best way to explain GCC exposure is by combining breadth and position of climatic niche of the species or combining geographic features indicators of both niche characteristics. Our best model shows that, in our study area, species with the narrowest distributional ranges that also inhabit the highest elevations are the most exposed to the effects of GCC. In this sense, reptile species from Yungas, Puna and Andes ecorregions could be especially vulnerable to the effects of GCC. We believe that these types of models may represent an interesting tool for determining species and places particularly threatened by the effects of GCC, and which should be strongly considered in conservation planning.