Modelagem de nicho ecológico e distribuição de dois corais endêmicos do Brasil

Abstract

Species distribution models are being used widely around the world to predict risk of species invasion, disease risk, species conservation and climate studies. These models are based on ecological niche theory and can be defined as models that relate species occurrence or abundance data at specific locations (distribution data) to information on the environmental characteristics of those locations (physical and chemical parameters) to identify areas with potential habitat for the target species. The main purpose of species distribution models is to estimate the realized niche, a subset of the fundamental niche of a species. In this research we use species distribution models to evaluate the impacts caused by climate change on the distribution of endangered coral species Mussismilia harttii and to identify areas with habitat suitable for the endemic octocoral Neospongodes atlantica, formerly unpublished soft coral gardens. in Brazil, but very common in the Indo-Pacific. For this, we used occurrence data obtained from specialized literature, biological collections and data collected in situ and correlated with environmental data using the Maxent algorithm. According to the results, the shallow waters south of the São Francisco River concentrate most of the current potential habitats for M. harttii. However, in future scenarios, there was a loss of adequate areas relative to the Current Potential Habitat. It was also observed in future scenarios that there was displacement of suitable areas to deeper water regions. In all Future Potential Habitat scenarios, temperature was the variable with the greatest contribution to the models. Occurrence log analysis has shown that the distribution of the octocoral N. atlantica may be wider than known. Current potential habitat models indicate that there are possibly several soft coral gardens in the mesophotic areas along the entire Brazilian continental shelf formed by N. atlantica. The results also showed that the current potential habitat area for N. atlantica extends 553015.5 km² along the continental shelf off the Brazilian coast, elucidating a gap in the distribution of this Brazilian endemic coral species. This type of research has been widely used for its ease and speed in obtaining data and for presenting results that assist in decision making to predict impacts on biodiversity caused by climate change, anthropogenic and environmental effects.