Diversidade e vulnerabilidade de mamíferos de montanha frente às mudanças climáticas
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Data
2025-08-29
Autores
Mendonça, Gabriela Colombo de
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Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo
Resumo
Mountains are essential ecosystems for maintaining biodiversity, since they are home to many species and play a crucial role in regulating the climate, providing water resources, and maintaining ecosystem services. Despite their importance, these environments face increasing threats, such as climate change intensified by changes in land use and land cover. Mountain ecosystems are particularly sensitive to such changes, which compromise ecological connectivity and alter altitudinal gradients, directly impacting the composition and functioning of communities. Mammals a group that perform essential ecological functions in these communities and are highly sensitive to environmental change. In this context, the objectives of this study were: 1) to characterize the Brazilian mountains concerning the species richness of non-volant mammals, their degree of protection, and the climatic, topographical and landscape factors that shaped this fauna; and 2) to evaluate the projected impacts of climate change on the environmental suitability and species richness in these regions. Using a global database, we mapped the mountains within Brazil, classified non-volant mammals based on their occurrences, characterized the levels of richness and sampling, and quantified the degree of protection of these areas. In addition, we investigated the role of climatic, topographical and landscape variables, and assessed the effects of future climate change on the richness and suitability of these areas. A total of 116 species of non-volant mammals were recorded in the 62 Brazilian mountains, including 11 species endemics to mountains, 8 typical of mountains, and 97 intermediates. Around a third of mountain species are threatened with extinctionunder some category, and more than half of the mountain endemics are at risk of extinction or have insufficient data to assess the degree of threat. Better-sampled regions, such as the Atlantic Forest, presented greater richness and diversity, while areas such as the Cerrado and the Amazon still lack more robust data. Forest cover predominated in the mountains, but only 9% of the most diverse areas in terms of mammals are covered by protected areas. Future projections indicate that most of the species assessed are likely to suffer a significant loss of climate suitability and a decline in richness under all future scenarios. The ratio between future and current area reveals progressive retraction, with the most extreme scenario projecting the reduction of 36% of the climatically suitable area by 2070 for mountain non-volant mammals. While a few species will be able to expand or maintain their projected areas in the future, most species show a tendency to area reduction, with more severe losses concentrated in central regions x and marginal gains in peripheral mountain areas. These results highlight that mountains with high biodiversity are among the most vulnerable regions, reinforcing the urgency of specific conservation strategies that take into account the differential vulnerability of species, the combined effects of climate and anthropogenic pressures, and the need to extend effective protection to these sensitive regions
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Modelagem ecológica , Riqueza de espécies , Espécies endêmicas , Biogeografia , Conservação , Ecological modelling , Species richness , Endemic species , Biogeography , Conservation