key: cord-0712536-onzw6nv1 authors: Hidasi-Neto, José; Alves Gomes, Nicole Mércia; Pinto, Nelson Silva title: Northern Cerrado Native Vegetation is a Refuge for Birds Under Current Climate Change date: 2021-11-17 journal: bioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2021.11.17.468959 sha: 76bd705a40c002303b5a5bfb95a52b8cd66db3e8 doc_id: 712536 cord_uid: onzw6nv1 Climate Change is already seen as one of the biggest threats to biodiversity in the 21st century. Not much studies direct attention to its effects on whole communities of threatened hotspots. In the present work, we combine ecological niche modelling (ENM) with a future climate scenario of greenhouse gases emissions to study the future changes in alpha and beta diversity of birds of the Brazilian Cerrado biome, a hotspot of biodiversity with high velocity of climate change and agricultural expansion. In general, we found heterogeneous results for changes in species richness, spatial and temporal taxonomic and functional beta diversity, and mean ecological distinctiveness. Contrary to a previous study on Cerrado mammals, species richness is expected to increase in Northern Cerrado, where homogenization of communities (decreasing spatial turnover) is also expected to occur especially through local invasions. We show that biotic homogenization (which is composed of local extinction of natives and local invasion of exotic species) will occur in two biological groups but through different subprocesses: local extinctions for mammals and local invasions for birds. Distinct conservation management actions should be directed depending on the outcomes of analyzes of alpha and spatial and temporal beta diversity, for example controlling species invasions in Northern Cerrado. Conservation studies should continue evaluating Cerrado in Brazil even under covid pandemic, as environmental situation in the country is not good and incentives for scientific studies are almost nonexistent. Earth is facing a, most probably anthropic, climate change, which is threatening great part of 32 biodiversity in the 21 st century [1] . Although United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on 33 Climate Change (IPCC) has declared several climate change scenarios in relation to the 34 emission of greenhouse gases (from worst to optimistic), we can expect changes to be bad for 35 species, but not always expecting the worst scenario, for this scenario "becomes increasingly 36 implausible with every passing year" [2, 3] . Even so, the synergistic effects of climate change 37 and land-use is leading biological groups to severe impacts [4] . It is also notable that climate 38 change does not threaten biomes equally. The velocity of climate change can be different 39 depending on regional climatic features. Mountainous biomes show the slowest velocity of 40 climate change, while flatter biomes such as mangroves, flooded grasslands and savannas 41 show the highest velocities [5] . Great focus should be pointed to the latter ecosystems as they 42 are the ones closest to a biodiversity collapse [6] . 43 The Cerrado biome is not only a flatter biome, therefore presenting a high velocity of climate 45 change [5] , but also a hotspot of biodiversity [7] . In other words, it is both threatened and 46 presents a high number of endemic species. Politically speaking, Cerrado is now facing a 47 decisive moment to deal with drivers of extinction of its rich biodiversity, with conservation 48 planners focusing on the conservation of areas with high amount of native vegetation (mostly 49 Northern Cerrado) [8] while restoring sites which suffered habitat loss or fragmentation 50 (mostly Southern Cerrado), but that can still harbor an expressive number of endemic species 51 [9] . Summing up all this information about Cerrado, the biome goes to the priority list of 52 regions to be studied in the current century. Indeed, the number of publications related to 53 Cerrado biodiversity and conservation has immensely increased since the 90s [8], and it 54 seems to continue increasing in the following years or even decades. Some studies on climate change effects on whole communities not only find evidence that 69 alpha diversity will be changed, but also beta diversity [16, 18] , which can be mostly reduced. 70 This is a great conservation concern as these findings can be related to a process of We studied birds from the Cerrado biome, which covers approximately 2,000,000km². The 108 biome has a very heterogeneous vegetation, presenting grassland savannas, semideciduous 109 forests, wet grasslands and rupestrian fields. In general, it presents a humid tropical climate, 110 showing wet summers and dry winters [28] . It is considered to be one of the most threatened 111 regions of the world, due mainly to agriculture-related habitat destruction and fragmentation 112 [28] . shapefile, removing cells with less than 50% cell area. We resampled means of bioclimatic 127 variables from our three (present and two GCMs) climate scenarios using this Cerrado grid. 128 We got trait data from EltonTraits 1.0 [33] while fixing synonyms (but see how species will 129 be considered or removed from analyses in the following subsection). In order to observe if climate change will reduce species richness, we first used the 151 occurrence maps to calculate richness in both the present and the future, calculating the 152 percentage change in relation to present-day Cerrado. Then, to observe if climate change will 153 generate biotic homogenization in Cerrado, for each focal cell we calculated mean spatial 154 turnover in relation to its 8 neighbor cells (some cells presenting less than 8 neighbors). We 8 155 did that in both the present and future, calculating also the change of future-present in values 156 of spatial turnover [16] . We also calculated the temporal turnover and nestedness between the 157 present and future Cerrado to be able to analyze regional changes due to richness or 158 composition change. We used occurrence matrices and trait data to filter Cerrado's present-159 day and future species and create a functional dendrogram. To do that we used data on body 160 mass (quantitative), activity period (binary), diet (fuzzy) and forage stratum (fuzzy), 161 calculating a Gower's distance matrix, then a UPGMA (Unweighted Pair Group Method with 162 Arithmetic Mean) functional dendrogram. We used this dendrogram to calculate spatial 163 functional turnover (same as spatial taxonomic turnover noted above, but considering a 164 functional dendrogram), using the turnover partition of PhyloSor index [16, 38] . We also used 165 the same index to calculate temporal functional turnover and nestedness. Finally, to analyze if 166 ecologically non-distinct birds arrive at places with ecologically distinct birds, reducing local 167 or regional mean ecological distinctiveness, we also used the functional dendrogram to We observed that, in general, there will be a reduction of bird species richness (-6.40 ± 23.465 175 species). We will have 237 bird regional extinctions and 116 regional invasions (see 176 Supplementary Material for more details). We observed a heterogeneous pattern of climate Beyond predictions: 298 Biodiversity conservation in a changing climate. 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Brasília Consequences of Simulated Loss of Open Cerrado Areas to Bird Functional Diversity Higher Diversity in Open Cerrado Supports 445 the Role of Regional Processes in Shaping an Anuran Assemblage in Southeastern S1) Species occurring in the present and in the future, and whether they are a regional extinction or a regional 452 invasion We thank the anonymous reviewers for critical comments on the text. 293 We also thank SUS (Sistema Único de Saúde) for the battle against covid in these mostly dark 294 times.