Climate Change Potentially Leads to Habitat Expansion and Increases the Invasion Risk of Hydrocharis (Hydrocharitaceae)

• Published in: Plants (Basel) Vol. 12; no. 24; p. 4124
• Main Authors: Yang, Jiongming, Fu, Zhihao, Xiao, Keyan, Dong, Hongjin, Zhou, Yadong, Zhan, Qinghua
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 10.12.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: Algorithms; Aquatic plants; Biodiversity; Carbon; Climate change; Emissions; Flowers & plants; Geographical distribution; Global climate; habitat expansion; Habitats; Hydrocharis; Hydrocharis morsus-ranae; Hydrocharitaceae; invasion; Invasive species; Investigations; Northern Hemisphere; Precipitation; Risk; species distribution models; Variables; Water flow; habitat expansion; Hydrocharis; invasion; aquatic plants; species distribution models
• ISSN: 2223-7747; 2223-7747
• DOI: 10.3390/plants12244124

Climate change is a crucial factor impacting the geographical distribution of plants and potentially increases the risk of invasion for certain species, especially for aquatic plants dispersed by water flow. Here, we combined six algorithms provided by the biomod2 platform to predict the changes in global climate-suitable areas for five species of (Hydrocharitaceae) ( , , , , and ) under two current and future carbon emission scenarios. Our results show that , , and had a wide range of suitable areas and a high risk of invasion, while and had relatively narrow suitable areas. In the future climate scenario, the species of may gain a wider habitat area, with Northern Hemisphere species showing a trend of migration to higher latitudes and the change in tropical species being more complex. The high-carbon-emission scenario led to greater changes in the habitat area of . Therefore, we recommend strengthening the monitoring and reporting of high-risk species and taking effective measures to control the invasion of species.