Exploration of the Ecological Niche of Chacoan Species in Environmental Space

CHIAPPERO, MARINA BEATRIZ; FERREIRO, ALEJANDRO MANUEL; PINOTTI, JUAN DIEGO; GONZÁLEZ ITTIG, RAÚL ENRIQUE

Latinoamerica

Encuentro; I Virtual Meeting of Systematics, Biogeography and Evolution; 2020

The SBE meeting is coordinated mostly by young interdisciplinary Latin American scientists, supporting and promoting the active and equitable participation of all genders in this meeting.

The Chaco is the only subtropical dry forest in the planet, it contains high levels of endemism and diversity of species. The destruction of chacoan habitats has been identified as one of the worst environmental disasters in South America. Ecological niche models (ENMs) allow relating species presences data with information about the environmental characteristics of these ocurrences. Several studies had implemented ENMs to infer the potential distribution of chacoan species but all of them were focused in the geographic space. Regarding that niches are modelled in environmental space, the characterization of the environmental niche of chacoan species would bring new information about the biogeography of this region.Based on this, we modelled the niches of four predominantly Chacoan taxa with a minimum  ellipsoid model (MVE) in the environmental space. We also calculate niche volumes and overlap between them.Our results show two species with broader niches (L. bufonius and T. matacus) and two with narrower ones (B. sarmientoi and C. callosus).  Interestingly, the species with broader niches reach lower latitudes in geographical space. Regarding the niche overlaps, we see that all of them are overlapped. In fact, there is a zone of the environmental space in which the four species overlap. In this first analysis of chacoan species, we include a woody plant (B. sarmientoi) a rodent (C. callosus) an armadillo (T. matacus) and a frog (L. bufonius). We could model their niches in environmental space and calculate some metrics to characterize them. We think that this approach could be useful to test different biogeographical hypothesis or could complement ecological or taxonomic studies of chacoan species.