Identifying island safe havens to prevent the extinction of the World's largest lizard from global warming.

ABSTRACT: The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is an endangered, island-endemic species with a naturally restricted distribution. Despite this, no previous studies have attempted to predict the effects of climate change on this iconic species. We used extensive Komodo dragon monitoring data, climate, and sea-level change projections to build spatially explicit demographic models for the Komodo dragon. These models project the species' future range and abundance under multiple climate change scenarios. We ran over one million model simulations with varying model parameters, enabling us to incorporate uncertainty introduced from three main sources: (a) structure of global climate models, (b) choice of greenhouse gas emission trajectories, and (c) estimates of Komodo dragon demographic parame

SUBMITTER: Jones AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7548163 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature