Shifting ranges and conservation challenges for lemurs in the face of climate change.

ABSTRACT: Geospatial modeling is one of the most powerful tools available to conservation biologists for estimating current species ranges of Earth's biodiversity. Now, with the advantage of predictive climate models, these methods can be deployed for understanding future impacts on threatened biota. Here, we employ predictive modeling under a conservative estimate of future climate change to examine impacts on the future abundance and geographic distributions of Malagasy lemurs. Using distribution data from the primary literature, we employed ensemble species distribution models and geospatial analyses to predict future changes in species distributions. Current species distribution models (SDMs) were created within the BIOMOD2 framework that capitalizes on ten widely used modeling techniques. Futur

SUBMITTER: Brown JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4377258 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature