Abstract

Climate change is a matter of worldwide concern with severe predicted impacts on biodiversity. Here, we analysed the potential impacts of current and future climates on aquatic true bugs (Heteroptera) in relation to their distribution patterns and ecological preferences (based on a database generated from existing literature references and field collections). We considered the traits as ‘species thermal range’ and ‘emergence period’ to evaluate the future climate change impacts on the distributions of aquatic true bugs in the riverine regions of a tropical biodiversity hotspot, the Western Ghats of India. We used Species Distribution Models (SDMs) to evaluate the potential impacts of climate change on the distributions of aquatic true bugs. We modelled the distributions of twenty-six species of aquatic true bugs using different modelling tools through a carefully examined set of occurrence records to generate potential present distributions and to project these distributions into future scenarios of climate change. We observed increasing/decreasing range sizes of the species in the current and future scenarios. We found losses and increases of species' ranges in some regions, but not much variation in species richness. Similarly, no significant effect was observed in the distribution ranges for species with different duration of emergence period and thermal range in current and future climatic scenarios. Losses and gains in species richness would be concentrated in the mountainous area of the Western Ghats, whereas loss of species and the bigger difference between current and future richness will occur in the adjacent lowlands and towards central regions, including the network of protected areas of the Western Ghats. These areas are critical to buffer regional species loss in the future.

Implications for insect conservation

Given the importance of aquatic true bugs as bioindicators and biological control agents, monitoring their range shifts should be routinely addressed in the conservation contexts of the Western Ghats.

中文翻译：

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预测气候对热带生物多样性热点中水生真虫的影响

摘要

气候变化是全球关注的问题，对生物多样性的影响预计将严重。在这里，我们分析了当前和未来气候对水生真虫（Heteroptera）的潜在影响及其分布方式和生态偏好（基于现有文献参考和实地收集的数据库）。我们将这些特征视为“物种热范围”和“出苗期”，以评估未来气候变化对热带生物多样性热点（印度西高止山脉）河沿地区水生真虫分布的影响。我们使用物种分布模型（SDM）评估了气候变化对水生真虫分布的潜在影响。我们通过仔细检查的一组事件记录，使用不同的建模工具，对26种水生真虫的分布进行了建模，以生成潜在的当前分布并将这些分布预测到未来的气候变化情景中。我们观察到当前和未来场景中物种的范围大小不断增加/减小。我们发现某些地区物种范围的损失和增加，但物种丰富度变化不大。同样，在当前和将来的气候情景中，对于具有不同出苗期持续时间和热范围的物种的分布范围，也没有观察到显着影响。物种丰富度的损失和收益将集中在西高止山脉的山区，而物种的丧失以及当前和未来富裕度之间更大的差异将发生在邻近的低地和中部地区，包括西高止山脉保护区网络。这些区域对于缓冲未来区域物种的流失至关重要。

对昆虫保护的意义

鉴于水生真虫作为生物指示剂和生物防治剂的重要性，在西高止山脉的保护范围内，应常规解决监测其范围变化的问题。