Many organisms will respond to climate change by shifting their ranges while pursuing potential climatically suitable areas. Predicting these area changes is important especially in dry areas such as the Brazilian semiarid biome, the Caatinga. Here we identified which Caatinga areas would be climatically suitable for small mammal species under different climate change scenarios; and quantified how much of these potential suitable areas would be gained or lost for each species under each scenario by 2050 and 2070. The small mammal species fall into two main ecological groups: 1) arid-adapted species with good climatic suitability for most of the Caatinga (four rodents were predicted to experience gain in their total suitable areas, while there was loss of suitable areas for all marsupials and two other rodents) and 2) species with good suitability for highlands or transitions areas with the Atlantic Forest (typically more vulnerable to climate change, experiencing loss of suitable area). These are the first predictions of climatically suitable area potentially lost and gained for the Caatinga small mammals during future climate change scenarios. Our results reinforce the need to ensure that conservation strategies are in place to deal with the unavoidable climate change consequences in this unique biome.

中文翻译：

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他们能去哪里？气候变化情景下卡廷加小型哺乳动物的潜在分布

许多生物体将通过改变其活动范围来应对气候变化，同时寻找潜在的气候适宜区域。预测这些地区的变化非常重要，尤其是在巴西半干旱生物群落卡廷加等干旱地区。在这里，我们确定了在不同气候变化情景下哪些卡廷加地区的气候适合小型哺乳动物物种；并量化了到 2050 年和 2070 年每种情景下每个物种将获得或失去多少潜在适宜区域。小型哺乳动物物种分为两个主要生态群：1）适应干旱的物种，对大多数物种具有良好的气候适宜性。卡廷加（预计四种啮齿类动物的总适宜区域会增加，而所有有袋动物和其他两种啮齿动物的适宜区域会减少）和 2）非常适合高地或大西洋森林过渡区域的物种（通常更脆弱）气候变化，经历适宜区域的丧失）。这是对卡廷加小型哺乳动物在未来气候变化情景中可能失去和获得的气候适宜区域的首次预测。我们的研究结果强调了确保保护战略到位的必要性，以应对这一独特生物群落中不可避免的气候变化后果。