Wild Felid Range Shift Due to Climatic Constraints in the Americas: a Bottleneck Explanation for Extinct Felids?

摘要

Heading>Abstract/Heading>Para ID="Par1">Theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that the ecological niche of species tends to be conservative over evolutionary time in many taxonomic groups, thus representing long-term stable constraints on species geographic distributions. Using an ecological niche modeling approach, we assessed the impact of climatic change on wild felid species potential range shifts over the last 130聽K聽years in the Americas and the potential of such shifts as an extinction driver. We found a significant range shift for most species (both living and extinct) across their distributions driven by large-scale environmental changes. Proportionally, the most drastic range increase for all species occurred in the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM: 18聽K聽years)鈥揅urrent transition, while for the Last Inter-Glacial (LIG: 130聽K聽years)鈥揕GM transition an important range reduction occurred, which was larger for extinct North American species. In conclusion, the reduction of climatically suitable areas for many species in the transition LIG鈥揕GM may have produced population reductions, which, in turn, may have played an important role in species鈥?extinction throughout the continent./Para>