Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jul 24:11:e15741.
doi: 10.7717/peerj.15741. eCollection 2023.

Impact of climate change on the geographical distribution and niche dynamics of Gastrodia elata

Juan Hu  1 , Ying Feng  1 , Haotian Zhong  1 , Wei Liu  1 , Xufang Tian  1 , Yehong Wang  2 , Tao Tan  3 , Zhigang Hu  1 , Yifei Liu  1
Affiliations

Impact of climate change on the geographical distribution and niche dynamics of Gastrodia elata

Juan Hu et al. PeerJ. .

Abstract

Background: Gastrodia elata is widely used in China as a valuable herbal medicine. Owing to its high medicinal and nutrient value, wild resources of G. elata have been overexploited and its native areas have been severely damaged. Understanding the impacts of climate change on the distribution of this endangered species is important for the conservation and sustainable use of G. elata.

Methods: We used the optimized maximum entropy model to simulate the potential distribution of G. elata under contemporary and future time periods (1970-2000, 2050s, 2070s, and 2090s) and different climate change scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5). Under these conditions, we investigated the key environmental factors influencing the distribution of G. elata as well as the spatial and temporal characteristics of its niche dynamics.

Results: With high Maxent model accuracy (AUCmean = 0.947 ± 0.012, and the Kappa value is 0.817), our analysis revealed that annual precipitation, altitude, and mean temperature of driest quarter are the most important environmental factors influencing the distribution of G. elata. Under current bioclimatic conditions, the potentially suitable area for G. elata in China is 71.98 × 104 km2, while the highly suitable region for G. elata growth is 7.28 × 104 km2. Our models for three future periods under four climate change scenarios indicate that G. elata can maintain stable distributions in southern Shaanxi, southwestern Hubei, and around the Sichuan basin, as these areas are highly suitable for its growth. However, the center of the highly suitable areas of G. elata shift depending on different climatic scenarios. The values of niche overlap for G. elata show a decreasing trend over the forecasted periods, of which the niche overlap under the SSP3-7.0 scenario shows the greatest decrease.

Discussions: Under the condition of global climate change in the future, our study provides basic reference data for the conservation and sustainable utilization of the valuable and endangered medicinal plant G. elata. It is important to carefully choose the protection area of G. elata wild resources according the suitable area conditions modeled. Moreover, these findings will be valuable for providing insights into the breeding and artificial cultivation of this plant, including the selection of suitable areas for planting.

Keywords: Climate change; Ecological niche; Gastrodia elata; Highly suitable area.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare there are no competing interests. Yehong Wang is employed by Wufeng Tujia Autonomous County Agricultural Science and Technology Demonstration Center. Tao Tan is employed by Wufeng Tujia Autonomous County Herbal Medicine Development Center.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. The distribution of potentially suitable areas for Gastrodia elata under current climatic scenarios.
Figure 2
Figure 2. The distributions of potentially suitable areas for Gastrodia elata under different climate change scenarios.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Changes in the distributions of highly suitable areas for Gastrodia elata in future periods under different climate change scenarios.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Variation in the centers of the distributions of highly suitable areas for Gastrodia elata.
Arrows indicate the directions in which the centers of mass migrate in different time periods and for different climate change scenarios.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Predicted changes in the climatic niche of Gastrodia elata under different climate change scenarios.
Orange lines indicate the climatic niche of G. elata in the current time period, while blue lines indicate its climatic niche in a future time period. Solid and dashed lines correspond to occupancy of 100% and 75% of the available environmental space, respectively. Darker shades indicate higher species densities. Blue arrows indicate how the center of the aspen climatic niche moves between the two ranges.
Figure 6
Figure 6. Changes in the rate of climatic niche overlap for Gastrodia elata in different time periods and under different climate change scenarios.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aguirre-Liguori JA, Ramírez-Barahona S, Gaut BS. The evolutionary genomics of species’ responses to climate change. Nature Ecology Evolution. 2021;5(10):1350–1360. doi: 10.1038/s41559-021-01526-9. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ahn EK, Jeon HJ, Lim EJ, Jung HJ, Park EH. Anti-inflammatory and anti-angiogenic activities of Gastrodia elata Blume. Journal of Ethnopharmacol. 2007;110(3):476–482. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2006.10.006. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Austin MP. Spatial prediction of species distribution: an interface between ecological theory and statistical modelling. Ecological Modelling. 2002;157(2):101–118. doi: 10.1016/S0304-3800(02)00205-3. - DOI
    1. Beaumont LJ, Hughes L, Poulsen M. Predicting species distributions: use of climatic parameters in BIOCLIM and its impact on predictions of species’ current and future distributions. Ecological Modelling. 2005;186(2):251–270. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2005.01.030. - DOI
    1. Boisvert-Marsh L, de Blois S. Unravelling potential northward migration pathways for tree species under climate change. Journal of Biogeography. 2021;48(5):1088–1100. doi: 10.1111/jbi.14060. - DOI

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources