Silvia B. Carvalho (1), João Torres (2), Pedro Tarroso (3), Guilherme Velo-Anton (4), Salvador Carranza (5) & Craig Moritz (6)
1 CIBIO/InBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos da Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, R. Padre Armando Quintas, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal, Silviacarvalho@cibio.up.pt, @Silviarbc.
2 CIBIO/InBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos da Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, R. Padre Armando Quintas, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal, joaocoutotorres@gmail.com
3 CIBIO/InBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos da Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, R. Padre Armando Quintas, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal, ptarroso@cibio.up.pt
4 CIBIO/InBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos da Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, R. Padre Armando Quintas, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal, guillermo.velo@gmail.com
5 Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta, 37-49, E-08003 Barcelona, Spain, salvicarranza@gmail.com
6 Research School of Biology and Centre for Biodiversity Analysis, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia, craig.moritz@anu.edu.au
Ongoing climate changes are affecting biodiversity both at ecological and evolutionary levels and many species are predicted to become threatened or shift their range in the near future. Iberian amphibians and reptiles are no exception and most of these species present high intra-specific genetic diversity. However, the effects of climate change at the intraspecific genetic level remain elusive. Here we forecasted the impact of climate change on the range contraction of intra-specific lineages of 14 amphibian and 20 reptile species in the Iberian Peninsula. We first mapped the current distribution of each lineage. To that end, we used published and new mtDNA sequences to estimate the phylogenetic relationships within each species, and grouped distinct haplotypes into main lineages. We then used a modified version of the kriging interpolation to predict current areas of occurrence of each lineage. We predicted the future range of each species to years 2050 and 2070 using an ensemble of seven techniques of species distribution modelling, 19 global circulation models and two representative concentration pathways scenarios. Finally, we mapped bioclimatic velocity and temporal exposure to climate change, using a set of different metrics. Our results show that many intraspecific lineages may severally contract their range or disappear in the near future, with implications to evolutionary processes. This loss is overlooked when only species-level diversity is used to forecast biodiversity loss. The northern Iberia is the area with highest temporal exposure to climate change and with highest predicted loss of cryptic diversity.