MaxEnt Modeling for Predicting Suitable Habitat for Endangered Tree Keteleeria davidiana (Pinaceae) in China

Abstract

Understanding species response to climate change is essential for the conservation and utilization of species resources under rapid climate change in the future. In this study, the present and future suitable distribution range of Keteleeria davidiana, a tertiary relict gymnosperm, was predicted based on the maximum entropy model (MaxEnt). A total of 158 occurrence records were collected after removing the duplicated records. Six low-correlation climate variables were used to predict species distributions. The three key climate factors that affect the distribution of K. davidiana were temperature seasonality (34.96%), mean temperature of the coldest quarter (28.30%) and precipitation seasonality (13.58%). The most suitable zone of the temperature seasonality for K. davidiana was between 377.4 and 843.4. The highly suitable area was located in the mountainous regions of central and southeast China, which accounted for 13.39% of the whole study area. With climate warming in the future, the highly suitable distribution area of K. davidiana was estimated to decrease by 35% (SSP1-2.6 scenario) or 85% (SSP5-8.5 scenario). This study has provided a sufficient scientific basis for the future in situ and ex situ conservation of K. davidiana.