Evaluating Habitat Suitability for the Endangered Sinojackia xylocarpa (Styracaceae) in China Under Climate Change Based on Ensemble Modeling and Gap Analysis

摘要

Sinojackia xylocarpa, endemic to China, has high value in landscaping. However, little is known about how it responds to climate change. We built an ensemble model in the Biomod2 package to forecast its potential distribution and evaluated its current protective effectiveness in China. The results showed that the four key influencing environmental factors were precipitation of the driest quarter, mean temperature of the warmest quarter, precipitation of the warmest quarter, and elevation. This species was mainly distributed in southeast China, with an area of 697,200 km2, accounting for 7.26 of China’s total territory. However, only 3.91 was located within national or provincial nature reserves. Under future climates, it would averagely decrease by 10.97 in suitable areas compared to the current, with more fragmented habitats. Therefore, our findings first demonstrate that future climate change may have an adverse effect on its distribution. We recommend conducting a supplementary investigation within the projected suitable range and establishing new conservation sites for S. xylocarpa in China. Moreover, this study provides a general picture for conserving other endangered Sinojackia species under global warming.