Potential interactive effects of climate and land-cover changes on bats and implications for conservation planning: a case study in Vietnam

Tuan, Le Quang and Thong, Vu Dinh and Son, Nguyen Truong and Tu, Vuong Tan and Tuan, Tran Anh and Luong, Nguyen Thanh and Thanh, Hoang Trung and Huang, Joe Chun-Chia and Csorba, Gábor and Görföl, Tamás and Tuanmu, Mao-Ning (2023) Potential interactive effects of climate and land-cover changes on bats and implications for conservation planning: a case study in Vietnam. BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION, 32. pp. 4481-4508. ISSN 0960-3115

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Abstract

Climate and land-cover changes are among major threats to biodiversity. However, the interactive efects of the two threats are often overlooked in conservation planning. Using 81 bat species occurring in Vietnam as a case, we investigated the individual and interactive efects of climate and land-cover changes, highlighting the importance of this information for conservation eforts. By using species distribution models, we predicted the potential changes in range size among species and in species richness across Vietnam by the 2050s, considering projected climate and land-cover changes under two emission scenarios. Our results revealed that both threats individually would have predominantly negative efects on bats in Vietnam. Moreover, when these threats occur simultaneously, their interactions would generally intensify the impacts by mitigating individual positive efects and/or enhancing negative efects. However, we also found large interspecifc and geographic variations in the direction and magnitude of these efects. Forest specialists, insectivores and cave-roosting species were predicted to be particularly vulnerable to the negative efects, with northern and southern Vietnam being more afected. These results underscore the urgent need to incorporate both climate and land-cover changes, as well as their interactions, into conservation planning for bats in Vietnam and biodiversity in general. The species-specifc and spatially-explicit information regarding the impacts of the two threats can guide conservation actions, allowing us to target more manageable and less uncertain threats, as well as prioritize the protection of more vulnerable species.

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