Assessing the interactive effects of land use and climate change on species assemblages of giant panda and its sympatric large- and medium-sized terrestrial mammals

Abstract

Land use and climate change are currently two most important drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide. Although the effect of these two drivers on species assemblages has been widely assessed both in isolation and in combination, their interactive effects (i.e., additive, synergistic, or antagonistic) are still poorly understood. Here, we used MaxEnt algorithm to project the potential distribution of 23 large- and medium-sized terrestrial mammals in the giant panda range for three model configurations in the 2070s: ( i ) current land use conditions and future climate conditions; ( ii ) future land use conditions and current climate conditions; and ( iii ) future land use conditions and future climate conditions. Then, we assessed the single and combined effects of land use and climate change on four diversity indices (i.e., changes in species richness, species gains, species losses and Sørensen similarity) and their interactive effects on species losses and species gains. Our results showed that land use change effects were substantially weaker than climate change effects and their interactive effects were additive in most cases. Moreover, both the climate change impacts and land use change impacts are spatially highly variable, with the greatest impacts in Xiaoxiangling mountains. These findings highlight the necessity and importance of assessing the interactive effect of land use and climate change on species assemblages and therefore provide new insights for adopting effective local climate and land use management polices to cope with global change.