Potential range dynamics of the southern three-banded armadillo under different scenarios of climate change

CHIAPPERO M.B.; FERREIRO, A.M.; SOIBELZON, E.

Evento on-line

Congreso; 100th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists; 2021

American Society of Mammalogists

One of the primary concerns for the conservation of biodiversity is the effects of future climate change. The southern three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus) belongs to a group of basal mammals that present the peculiarity of being poor thermoregulators, and specifically, this species presents a strong correlation between its activity patterns and air temperature. Therefore, it is crucial to infer the impacts of the unprecedented rapid rate of global warming (and associated alterations in precipitation patterns), to develop effective strategies that allow their conservation. Here, we assess the effects of future climate change (predictions to the year 2100) over the potential distribution of the species, using ecological niche modeling approach. We collected presence data of the species from fieldwork and literature review and used climate variables from WoldClim 2.1. Preliminary findings suggest that the species will gain suitable areas under future climatic conditions. The increase in suitable areas would mainly occur to the east of the current potential distribution of the species. However, these expansions of suitable areas should be taken with caution since they do not take into account an important current barrier for dispersal of the species, such as the Parana-Paraguay basin. Understanding the synergy between climate and geographical barriers to infer more robust predictions of the response of species, is a key step to design effective efforts for conservation.