Geographic  shifts in climatically suitable areas and loss of genetic variability in Dipteryx  alata ("Baru" Tree; Fabaceae).
Many  species are expected to suffer strong shifts in their geographic ranges due to  climate changes in the next 50 years, with severe consequences for biodiversity  patterns and population structure. We used here an ensemble forecast approach  for obtaining species' range in which multiple species distribution models and  climatic models were combined to model loss of genetic variability in Baru, Dipteryx  alata (Fabaceae), an economically important Neotropical tree native to the  Cerrado of Brazil. We estimated a series of genetic parameters (number of  alleles per locus, expected heterozygosity under Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and  mutation-drift equilibrium) for this species based on eight microsatellite  loci. We then recalculated these parameters assuming that local populations in  areas of low future environmental suitability will go extinct. All genetic  parameters remained approximately constant up to a 50% threshold of climatic  suitability in the future; after this critical threshold there is an abrupt  reduction in all parameters, although the magnitude of shift is only about 10%  of current values, on average. Thus, despite the shifts in geographic range and  climatically suitable areas towards southeastern Brazil, our analyses do not predict  a strong loss of genetic diversity in D. alata because of the broad  tolerance of this species, which ensures large future ranges, contrasting with  other Cerrado species that have been analyzed in a similar manner.
Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, GO, Brasil.
J A F
JA
Diniz-Filho
R G
RG
Collevatti
L J
LJ
Chaves
T N
TN
Soares
J C
JC
Nabout
T F
TF
Rangel
D B
DB
Melo
J S
JS
Lima
M P C
MP
Telles
D046914:Dipteryx / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics; D005843:Geography; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics