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Detecting and Attributing the Effects of Climate Change on the Distributions of Snake Species Over the Past 50 Years

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Abstract

It is unclear whether the distributions of snakes have changed in association with climate change over the past years. We detected the distribution changes of snakes over the past 50 years and determined whether the changes could be attributed to recent climate change in China. Long-term records of the distribution of nine snake species in China, grey relationship analysis, fuzzy sets classification techniques, the consistency index, and attributed methods were used. Over the past 50 years, the distributions of snake species have changed in multiple directions, primarily shifting northwards, and most of the changes were related to the thermal index. Driven by climatic factors over the past 50 years, the distribution boundary and distribution centers of some species changed with the fluctuations. The observed and predicted changes in distribution were highly consistent for some snake species. The changes in the northern limits of distributions of nearly half of the species, as well as the southern and eastern limits, and the distribution centers of some snake species can be attributed to climate change.

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Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper was substantially supported by a project of the National Science and Technology Support Program of China—“The Risk and Impacted of Climate Change on Biodiversity in China (2012BAC19B06).” We would like to thank those who provided a helpful discussion of the ideas presented in this paper. Instructive comments from two anonymous reviewers greatly improved this manuscript. Many thanks are given to Pr. Shaohong Wu, Dr Tao Pan, and Dr Jie Pan for providing climate dates and to Dr. Qiaofu Zhou for ArcGIS mapping.

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  1. The Center for Climate Change, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, No. 8, Da Yang Fang, Beiyuan, Anwai, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100012, China

    Jianguo Wu

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Correspondence to Jianguo Wu.

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Wu, J. Detecting and Attributing the Effects of Climate Change on the Distributions of Snake Species Over the Past 50 Years. Environmental Management 57, 207–219 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0600-3

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