engleski

Impact of climate factors on habitat suitability of an amphi-Adriatic plant Festuca bosniaca Kumm. et Sendtn.

Festuca bosniaca is an endemic species of the Balkan and Apennine Peninsulas, occurring in alpine and subalpine grasslands. Species distribution modelling (SDMs) was used to determine the habitat suitability for current and past (Last Glacial Maximum - LGM) time periods. The occurrence points of F. bosniaca were collected in the field from 2018 to 2021 and were supplemented with additional points from the Flora Croatica database. The models were build on 103 points after filtering and of eight (one geomorphological and seven bioclimatic) selected environmental variables of initial set of 43 variables from CHELSA and exChelsa databases. Current habitat suitability was predicted based on 13 selected predictors. SDMs was conducted using the Maximum Entropy method, with 70% of the occurrences used for model training and 30% of the occurrences used for model evaluation. Projections for the LGM period were based on four general circular models (GCMs) (NCAR-CCSM4, MRI-CGCM3, MPI-ESM-P, MIROC-ESM) averaged to produce a consensus LGM projection. All resulting models performed very well (AUC > 0.9) and the main environmental variables affecting habitat suitability of F. bosniaca were: mean daily mean air temperatures of the wettest quarter (bio8), mean monthly precipitation amount of the warmest quarter (bio 19), mean daily mean air temperatures of the coldest quarter (bio11) and slope. Current habitat suitability was also influenced by soil organic carbon content and number of snow days. The habitat suitability coincides well with the known occurrences of F. bosniaca in the Balkans and Apennines. The models also showed some potentially newly discovered populations in the area of the Scardo-Pindic mountains and in the north-western part of the Apennine Peninsula. When comparing the models for the LGM and the present, a much wider range was observed in the past, which may be related to the lower temperatures favoured by F. bosniaca.

Bioclimatic variables, Festuca bosniaca, habitat suitability, Maxent modelling

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