Using endemic freshwater fishes as proxies of their ecosystems to identify high priority rivers for conservation under climate change

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106137Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We quantified the impacts of climate change on the distribution of 15 endemic freshwater fishes.

  • We found that five species will lose their current suitable range under climate change while ten species will gain new suitable habitats.

  • We identified 20 high priority rivers for conservation under climate change.

Abstract

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most endangered ecosystems on Earth and are vulnerable to climate change. Studies have shown that climate change has already altered the phenology and distribution of freshwater species. However, there are still major gaps in our understanding of potential impacts of climate change on freshwater ecosystems and their organisms. Freshwater fishes were used as effective indicators for identifying the degree, direction and scale of changes in aquatic ecosystems and as indicators of freshwater ecosystem quality and health. However, they are rarely used to determine sensitive freshwater ecosystems to climate change using species distribution modeling. We modeled current and future distribution of 15 endemic freshwater fish in Iran to identify winners and losers of climate change and high priority rivers for conservation under climate change. In addition, we assessed changes in elevational distribution of the species under climate change. Our results showed that five species will lose some parts of their current suitable range under climate change while ten species will gain new suitable habitats. Considering their restricted range, endemic species are of special conservation concern, so results of this study can be used for conservation of endemic freshwater fishes. Species which were identified to be negatively affected by climate change should be prioritized for monitoring and conservation and can be the subject of future conservation programs. Using the five species for which reductions of range size were predicted, 20 rivers were identified as targets of future conservation actions to reduce negative impacts of climate change on freshwater fish.

Introduction

Climate change is a major threat to all levels of biodiversity from genes to ecosystems (Parmesan and Yohe, 2003, Root et al., 2003, Bellard et al., 2012, Urban, 2015). Freshwater ecosystems are among the most endangered ecosystems on Earth and are vulnerable to climate change (Sala et al., 2000, Jenkins, 2003, Dudgeon et al., 2006, Nel et al., 2009, Döll and Zhang, 2010). Despite freshwater ecosystems covering <0.1% of the Earth’s surface (Gleick, 1996) they support a very high biological diversity (around one third of global vertebrate diversity) and provide important ecosystem services (Helfman et al., 2009, Dawson, 2012, Dudgeon et al., 2006). Studies have shown that climate change already altered the phenology and distribution of freshwater species (Daufresne et al., 2004, Hassall et al., 2007). For instance, Daufresne et al (2004) showed that thermophilic fish and invertebrate species replaced northern, cold‐water species in response to climatic warming in the Upper Rhône River in France. However, there are still major gaps in our understanding of potential impacts of climate change on freshwater ecosystems and their organisms (Harrod, 2015). Freshwater fishes are among the most diverse and threatened taxonomic groups (Dudgeon, 2011, Closs et al., 2015, Arthington et al., 2016, Comte and Olden, 2017). They are recognized as effective indicator for identifying the degree, direction and scale of changes in aquatic ecosystems (Izzo et al., 2016) and were used as indicator of freshwater quality and health (Oberdorff et al., 2001, Kennard et al., 2006). Thus fish can be used as an indicator to predict how freshwater ecosystems and organisms living in these ecosystems may be affected by future climatic changes (Oberdorff et al., 2001, Kennard et al., 2006, Izzo et al., 2016).

Species distribution models (SDMs) are frequently used in ecology (Elith and Leathwick, 2007), biogeography (Franklin, 2013), and conservation (Gama et al., 2017, Moradi et al., 2019). SDMs are very useful tools to predict how species will be effected by future climatic changes (Beaumont et al., 2008, Schwartz, 2012, Garcia et al., 2012). SDMs are increasingly being used in freshwater and marine ecosystems (Bond et al., 2011, Lambert et al., 2014, Kuemmerlen et al., 2014, Bouska et al., 2015, Rose et al., 2016, Gama et al., 2017, James et al., 2017, Barragán-Barrera et al., 2019). For example, Albouy et al. (2013) studied the impacts of climate change on 288 fish species in the Mediterranean Sea by employing SDMs; they found that suitable habitats for 54 species will be reduced under climate change.

Due to its high climatic and topographic diversity as well as locating at the crossroad of three biogeographical realms, Iran has a high species diversity. Freshwater fish with 264 species are among the most diverse and endemic species-rich group of vertebrates in the country (Jouladeh-Roudbar et al., 2015, Esmaeili et al., 2018a). Despite numerous studies on the natural history, taxonomy and phylogeny (see in Jouladeh-Roudbar et al., 2020, Esmaeili et al., 2018a for an overview) of freshwater species in Iran, there is not much known about the ecology and conservation status. Recent studies showed that climate change may be a major threat to fish biodiversity. For example, Esmaeili et al. (2018b) predicted a negative effect of climate change on the distribution of five freshwater fish of the genus Alburnus. Morid et al. (2016) found that the habitat suitability for Oxynoemacheilus bergianus will be decrease under climate change.

The aims of present study were to identify winners and losers of climate change among freshwater fishes and to use freshwater fishes as proxies of their ecosystems to identify high priority rivers for conservation under climate change. Thus, we predicted the impacts of climate on distribution of 15 endemic freshwater species in Iran using species distribution modeling.

Section snippets

Case study area

Iran with area around 164 million hectares is a biologically diverse country located in West Asia. In the country elevation ranges from −26 to 5770 m and precipitation ranges from 25 mm in deserts to 2000 mm in Hyrcanian forests. The Elburz Mountains (1000 km), Zagros Mountains (1500 km) and Kopet Dagh Mountains (650 km) are three major mountain ranges in the country. More than 8000 plants and around 1214 vertebrate species were recorded in the country. Fifteen freshwater ecoregions (1. Kura -

Climate change

The models predicted that climate change is likely to lead to a reduction in range size (i.e., the area predicted to be suitable for the species) for five species (Acanthobrama persidis, Alburnoides tabarestanensis, Alburnus doriae, Capoeta buhsei and Cobitis faridpaki; Fig. 2) while the range of ten species is likely to increase (Alburnoides idignensis, Alburnoides namaki, Alburnoides samiii, Barbus miliaris, Capoeta aculeate, Carasobarbus sublimus, Garra persica, Glyptothorax silviae,

Discussion

Under climate change, species will have three responses; adapting to new climate, tracking suitable habitat, or going extinct (Hannah, 2015). Climate change is likely to negatively affect most species but some may benefit from climate change if the amount of suitable habitat increases. Identifying winners and losers is becoming and important topic in climate change studies (Muths et al., 2017, Kafash et al., 2018). Having identified winners and losers it would be possible to manage each species

Conclusions

We identified five species which will lose their suitable habitats under climate change and listed 20 rivers that these species occur in. A suitable conservation action would be to protect these rivers by including them in the network of Iran’s protected areas. Large areas of low-elevation habitats of Acanthobrama persidis and Alburnus doriae and low and mid elevation habitats of Alburnoides tabarestanensis, Capoeta buhsei and Cobitis faridpaki will become unsuitable over the next few decades.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Masoud Yousefi: Conceptualization, Methodology, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Arash Jouladeh-Roudbar: Investigation, Visualization, Writing - review & editing. Anooshe Kafash: Methodology, Software, Visualization, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The Ecology and Conservation Research Group (ECRG) was supported by Iran's National Elites Foundation. We would like to thank Benedikt R. Schmidt and Daniel Kane for reviewing a previous version of the manuscript.

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