Predicting impressions of climate change on the distribution of Crocodile newt (Tylototriton verrucosus), a rare Amphibian in the Darjeeling Himalayan sub-region, India.

Biplab Das, Ashoke Das, Kanak Kanti Baishya

Abstract


ABSTRACT:

In view of a proper action plan on conservation and management of a species, particularly the rare ones with special ecological interest, comprehensive knowledge on its geographic distributions is a must. Tylototriton verrucosus is one such species with special ecological importance, being the lone representative Urodel in India. Information on its distribution is there but scarce. In West Bengal, India, the distribution of Tylototriton verrucosus is restricted in the northern section. The preliminary goal of this work is to (i) recognize and predict the present and future distribution range of Tylototriton verrucosus on the basis of species incidence data and 19 environmental variables, (ii) define the most significant climatic variables regulating the distribution of the species in the Darjeeling Himalayan sub-region. We accomplished our goal utilizing maximum entropy algorithm, species occurrence data of Tylototriton verrucosus and environmental predictor variables. With a notable AUC value 0.859, and a standard deviation of (± 0.114), that's better than 0.5 of the null version; the MaxEnt model turned into a good one. The potential present optimal distribution area covers nearly 26.98 Km² areas. Our findings depicted that Annual Mean Temperature (46.6%), Isothermality (29.5%) and Precipitation of Driest Quarter (11.6%) promises to be the key environmental variables for predicting current and future potential distribution. Our results suggest (i) an increase in optimal suitable area in both 2050 and 2070 for the RCP scenarios of 4.5 and 8.5, respectively and (ii) Annual mean temperature regulates the overall distribution of the newt. Our results may be carried out in diverse ways together with the identity of extra territories in which newts can also additionally already exist, however has now no longer but been detected; the popularity of localities in which it's far possibly to unfold to; the concern choice place for creation and refinement and the preservation and protection of such uncommon species.


Keywords


Climate change, Modeling, MaxEnt, RCPs, Amphibia, Conservation.

References


References:

Abram, P.K., Boivin, G., Moiroux, J., Brodeur, J., 2017. Behavioural effects of temperature on ectothermic animals: unifying thermal physiology and behavioural plasticity. Biological Reviews. 92,1859e1876.

Anderegg, W.R.L., Hicke, J.A., Fisher, R.A., Allen, C.D., Aukema, J., Bentz, B., et al., 2015.Tree mortality from drought, insects, and their interactions in a changing climate. New Phytologist 208, 674–683.

Anderson, J. 1871. Description of a new genus of newts from western Yunnan. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London: 423-425.

Anderson, R.P., Martinez-Meyer, E., 2004. Modeling species’ distributions for preliminary conservation assessments: an implementation with the spiny pocket mice (Heteromys) of Ecuador. Biological conservation, 116, 167–179.

Annandale N. (1908), “Breeding habits of Tylototriton verrucosus,” Records of the Indian Museum, 2, 305 – 306.

Araujo MB, Pearson RG, Thuiller W, Erhard M. Validation of species–climate impact models under climate change. Global Change Biology 2005;11:1504–13.

Araújo MB, Thuiller W, Pearson RG. 2006. Climate warming and the decline of amphibians and reptiles in Europe. Journal of Biogeography 33:1712e1728.

Baldwin RA. Use of maximum entropy modeling in wildlife research. Entropy. 2009;11, 854–66.

Beaumont LJ, Hughes L, Pitman A. Why is the choice of future climate scenarios for species distribution modelling important? Ecology Letters,2008;11:1135–46.

Biodiversity, and Climate Change. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Montreal, pp. 67 technical series 43.

Brooks, TM; Mittermeier, RA; da Fonseca, GAB; Gerlach, J; Hoffmann, M; Lamoreux, JF; Mittermeier, CG; Pilgrim, JD; Rodrigues, ASL (2006) ‘Global biodiversity conservation priorities’. Science 313: 58-61

Brown, Jason & Bennett, Joseph & French, Connor. (2017). SDMtoolbox 2.0: The next generation Python-based GIS toolkit for landscape genetic, biogeographic and species distribution model analyses. PeerJ. 5. e4095. 10.7717/peerj.4095.

Chaudhuri S. K. (1966), “Studies on Tylototriton verrucosus (Himalayan newt) found in Darjeeling,” The journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 35, 32 – 36.

Chen, I.C., et al., 2011. Rapid range shifts of species associated with high levels of climate warming. Science 333, 1024–1026.

Coetzee, B.W.T., Robertson, M.P., Erasmus, B.F.N., Van Rensburg, B.J., Thuiller, W., 2009. Ensemble models predict important bird areas in southern Africa will become less effective for conserving endemic birds under climate change. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 18, 701–710.

Dasgupta R. (1983), “Observation on the Himalayan newt,” Journal of Bengal Natural History Society (N.S.) 2: 59–60.

Dasgupta R. (1984), “Parental care in the Himalayan newt,” Journal of Bengal Natural History Society (N.S.) , 3(2), 106 – 109.

Dasgupta R. (1988), “The young of the Himalayan newt,” Journal of Bengal Natural History Society (N.S.), 7(1), 3 – 18.

Dasgupta R. (1990), “Distribution and conservation problems of the Himalayan newt (Tylototriton verrucosus) in the Darjeeling Himalayas,” Hamadryad, 15(1), 13 – 15.

Dasgupta R. and Dasgupta B. (1990a), “Collembolan insects as potential parasites,” Transactions of The Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 84, 438.

Dasgupta R. and Dasgupta B. (1990b), “On the conservation of the Himalayan salamander Tylototriton verrucosus,” in: G. K. Manna and B. B. Jana (eds.), Impacts of Environment on Animals and Aquaculture, Calcutta, pp. 283 – 285.

Dasgupta R., Lama P., Bhattacharjee A., Bera S., De K. K., Mukharjee T., and Dasgupta B. (1989), “Lentic habitats in the Darjeeling Himalayas and problems related to their conservation,” Journal of Bengal Natural History Society (N.S.), 8(2), 66 – 69.

Dawson, T.P., Jackson, S.T., House, J.I., Prentice, I.C., Mace, G.M., 2011.Beyond predictions: biodiversity conservation in a changing climate. Science 332, 53–58.

Dhar,U (2002) ‘Conservation implications of plant endemism in high-altitude Himalaya’. Current Science 82: 141-148

Dobrowski, S.Z. A climatic basis for microrefugia: The influence of terrain on climate. Global Change Biology 2011, 17, 1022–1035.

Dobrowski, S.Z., et al., 2013. The climate velocity of the contiguous United States during the 20th century. Global Change Biology 19, 241–251.

Duckett, P.E., Wilson, P.D., Stow, A.J., 2013.Keeping up with the neighbours: using a genetic measurement of dispersal and species distribution modelling to assess the impact of climate change on an Australian arid zone gecko (Gehyra variegata). Diversity and Distributions 19 (8), 964–976.

Elith J, Graham CH, Anderson RP, et al. 2006. Novel methods improve prediction of species’ distributions from occurrence data. Ecography 29:129e151.

Elith J, Phillips SJ, Hastie T, et al. 2011. A statistical explanation of MaxEnt for ecologists. Diversity and Distributions 17:43e57.

Elith, J., Leathwick, J., 2009. Species distribution models: ecological explanation and prediction across space and time. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 40, 677–697.

Engler R, Guisan A, Rechsteiner L. An improved approach for predicting the distribution of rare and endangered species from occurrence and pseudoabsence data. Journal of Applied Ecology 2004;41:263–74.

Fielding AH, Bell JF. A review of methods for the assessment of prediction errors in conservation presence/absence models. Environmental Conservation 1997; 24:38–49.

Fourcade, Y., Engler, J.O., Rodder, D., Secondi, J., 2014. Mapping species distributions with MaxEnt using a geographically biased sample of presence data: a performance assessment of methods for correcting sampling bias. PLoS One 9, e97122.

Franklin, J., Miller, J.A., 2009. Mapping Species Distributions-Inference and Predictions. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Gallagher, R.V., Hughes, L., Leishman, M.R., 2013. Species loss and gain in communities under future climate change: consequences for functional diversity. Ecography 36 (5), 531–540.

Garcia, K., Lasco, R., Ines, A., Lyon, B., Pulhin, F., 2013. Predicting geographic distribution and habitat suitability due to climate change of selected threatened forest tree species in the Philippines. Applied Geography 44, 12–22.

Graham, C.H., Hijmans, R.J., 2006. A comparison of methods for mapping species ranges and species richness. Global Ecology and Biogeography 15, 578–587.

Hansen, J., Ruedy, R., Sato, M., Lo, K., 2010.Global surface temperature change. Reviews of Geophysics 48 RG4004.

Hegde, V.D. and Deuti, K. 2007. Status Survey of Endangered Species. Status Survey of Himalayan Salamander Tylototriton verrucosus Anderson in Darjeeling Hills : 1-19. (published by the Director, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata)

IUCN [International Union for the Conservation of Nature & Natural Resources] 2017. The IUCN Red List of threatened species. Version 2017-3. Accessed at http://www.iucnredlist.org. Accessed on 17th July 2018

Jena, P., Azad, S., Rajeevan, M.N., 2016. CMIP5 projected changes in the annual cycle of Indian monsoon rainfall. Climate, 4 (14), 1–11.

Kumar, S., Graham, J., West, A.M., Evangelista, P.H., 2014. Using district-level occurrences in MaxEnt for predicting the invasion potential of an exotic insect pest in India. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 103, 55–62.

Kumar, S., Spaulding, S.A., Stohlgren, T.J., Hermann, K.A., Schmidt, T.S., et al., 2009. Potential habitat distribution for the freshwater diatom Didymosphenia geminata in the continental US. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7, 415–420.

Loarie, S.R., Duffy, P.B., Hamilton, H., Asner, G.P., Field, C.B., Ackerly, D.D., 2009. The velocity of climate change. Nature 462, 1052.

Malcolm, J.R., Liu, C.R., Neilson, R.P., Hansen, L., Hannah, L., 2006.Global warming and extinctions of endemic species from biodiversity hotspots. Conservation Biology 20, 538–548.

Mansukhani M. R., Julaka J. M., and Sankar H. K. (1976), “On the occurrences of the Himalayan newt Tylototriton verrucosus Anderson from Arunachal Pradesh, India,” Newsletter Zoological Survey, 2(6), 243 – 245.

Marcer, A., Sáez, L., Molowny-Horas, R., Pons, X., Pino, J., 2013. Using species distribution modelling to disentangle realised versus potential distributions for rare species conservation. Biological Conservation 166, 221–230.

Meinshausen, M., Smith, S.J., Calvin, K., et al. (2011) The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions from 1765 to 2300. Climatic Change, 109, 213–241.

Moritz, C., Patton, J.L., Conroy, C.J., Parra, J.L., White, G.C., Beissinger, S.R., 2008. Impact of a century of climate change on small-mammal communities in Yosemite National Park, USA. Science 322, 261e264.

Myers, N; Mittermeier, RA; Mittermeier, CG; da Foseca GAB, KJ (2000) ‘Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities’. Nature 403(24): 853-858

Pearson RG, Dawson TP. 2003. Predicting the impacts of climate change on the distribution of species: are bioclimate envelope models useful? Global Ecology and Biogeography 12:361e371.

Pearson, R.G., Raxworthy, C.J., Nakamura, M., Peterson, A. Townsend, 2007. Predicting species distributions from small numbers of occurrence records: a test case using cryptic geckos in Madagascar. Journal of Biogeography 34, 102–117.

Peterson, A.T., Ortega-Huerta, M.A., Bartley, J., et al., 2002. Future projections for Mexican faunas under global climate change scenarios. Nature 416, 626–629.

Peterson, A.T., Soberón, J., Pearson, R.G., Anderson, R.P., Martínezmeyer, E., Nakamura, M., 2011. Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Phillips SJ, Anderson RP, Schapire RE. 2006. Maximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions. Ecological Modelling 190:231e259.

Phillips, S. J. and M. Dudık. 2008. Modeling of species distributions with Maxent: new extensions and a comprehensive evaluation. Ecography 31: 161-175.

Phillips, S.J., Anderson, R. P. and R. E. Schapire. 2006. Maximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions. Ecological modeling 190: 231-259.

Phillips, S.J., Dudik, M., Elith, J., Graham, C.H., Lehmann, A., Leathwick, J., Ferrier, S., 2009. Sample selection bias and presence-only distribution models: implications for background and pseudo-absence data. Ecological Applications 19, 181–197.

Pongpattananurak, N. Aingorn Chaiyes, Prateep Duengkae 2, Yodchaiy Chuaynkern 3 and. In International Workshop on Ecological Knowledge for Adaptation on Climate Change (p. 52).

Priti, H., Aravind, N.A., Uma Shaanker, R., Ravikanth, G., 2016. Modeling impacts of future climate on the distribution of Myristicaceae species in the Western Ghats,India. Ecological Engineering 89, 14–23.

Raju, K.S., Kumar, D.N., 2016. Selection of global climate models for India using cluster analysis. Journal of Water and Climate Change 8 (2), 764–774.

Raxworthy, C.J., Martinez-Meyer, E., Horming, N., et al., 2003. Predicting distributions of known and unknown reptile species in Madagascar. Nature 426, 837–841.

Rebelo, H., Jones, G., 2010. Ground validation of presence-only modelling with rare species: a case study on barbastelles Barbastella barbastellus (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae). Journal of Applied Ecology 47, 410–420.

Remya, K., Ramachandran, A., Jayakumar, S., 2015. Predicting the current and future suitable habitat distribution of Myristica dactyloides Gaertn. using MaxEnt model in the Eastern Ghats. India. Ecological Engineering 82, 184–188.

Santos X, Brito JC, Sillero N, et al. 2006. Inferring habitat-suitability areas with ecological modelling techniques and GIS: A contribution to assess the conservation status of Vipera latastei. Biological Conservation 130:416e425.

Sardà-Palomera, F., Brotons, L., Villero, D., Sierdsema, H., Newson, S.E., Jiguet, F., 2012. Mapping from heterogeneous biodiversity monitoring data sources. Biodiversity and Conservation 21, 2927–2948.

Scheffers, B.R., Edwards, D.P., Diesmos, A., Williams, S.E., Evans, T.A., 2014. Microhabitats reduce animal's exposure to climate extremes. Global Change Biology 20, 495e503.

Seebacher, F., White, C.R., Franklin, C.E., 2015. Physiological plasticity increases resilience of ectothermic animals to climate change. Nature Climate Change 5 (1), 61.

Selim K. (2001), “Notes on Tylototriton verrucosus Anderson: a critically endangered newt from Manipur,” The journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 98(2), pp. 291.

Sengupta, Shruti. (2012). Mapping distribution and understanding conservation status of Himalayan Crocodile Salamander (Tylototriton verrucosus).

Shrestha T. K. (1984), “On the distribution and habitat of the Himalayan newt (Tylototriton verrucosus) in the eastern Nepal,” The journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 81, 485 – 487.

Shrestha T. K. (1989), “Ecological aspects of the life-history of the Himalayan newt, Tylototriton verrucosus (Anderson) with reference to conservation and management,” The journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 86, 333 – 338.

Shrestha T. K. (1994), “Habitat ecology of the Mai Pokhari wetlands in Nepal and management plan for survival of the Himalayan newt, Tylototriton verrucosus,” in: W. M. Mitsch (ed.), Global Wetlands. Old World and New, Elsevier, Amsterdam – Lausanne – New York – Oxford – Shannon – Tokyo, pp. 857 – 862.

Sinsch, U., 2014. Movement ecology of amphibians: from individual migratory behaviour to spatially structured populations in heterogeneous landscapes. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 92, 491e502.

Smith, M.A., Green, D.M., 2005. Dispersal and the metapopulation paradigm in amphibian ecology and conservation: are all amphibian populations metapopulations? Ecography 28, 110e128.

Thompson,I.,Mackey,B.,McNulty,S.,Mosseler,A.,2009.A Synthesis of the biodiversity/resilience/stability relationship in forest ecosystems. Forest Resilience,

Thorn, J.S., Nijman, V., Smith, D., Nekaris, K.A.I., 2009. Ecological niche modelling as a technique for assessing threats and setting conservation priorities for Asian slow Lorises (Primates: Nycticebus). Diversity and Distributions 15, 289–298.

Thuiller, W., Lavorel, S., Araujo, M.B., 2005. Niche properties and geographical extent as predictors of species sensitivity to climate change. Global Ecology and Biogeography 14, 347–357.

Whittaker RJ, Araújo MB, Paul J, et al. 2005. Conservation biogeography: assessment and prospect. Diversity and Distributions 11:3e23.

Williams JN, Seo C, Thorne J, et al. 2009.Using species distribution models to predict new occurrences for rare plants. Diversity and Distributions 15:565e576.

Wilson, C.D., Roberts, D., Reid, N., 2011. Applying species distribution modelling to identify areas of high conservation value for endangered species: a case study using Margaritifera margaritifera (L.). Biological Conservation 144, 821–829.

Wisz, M.S., Hijmans, R.J., Li, J., Peterson, A.T., Graham, C.H., Guisan, A., 2008. Effects of sample size on the performance of species distribution models. Diversity and Distributions 14, 763–773.

Yang, X.Q., Kushwaha, S.P.S., Saran, S., Xu, J., Roy, P.S., 2013. MaxEnt modelling for predicting the potential distribution of medicinal plant Justicia adhatoda (L.) in Lesser Himalayan foothills. Ecological Engineering 51, 83–87.

Zhao E. and Adler K. (1993), Herpetology of China, Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Oxford (Ohio, USA).


Full Text: PDF

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

COPYRIGHT of this Journal vests fully with the National Instional Institute of Ecology. Any commercial use of the content on this site in any form is legally prohibited.