Evaluating Effects Of Climate Changes On Genetic Diversity Using DNA Barcodes And Species Distribution Models

Climate has great impacts on organism’s development and distribution. It is one of the most important abiotic factors that affect species’genetic diversity.Currently, anthropogenic global climate changes greatly threat biodiversity. How species will respond to climate change and how climate change will influence the genetic diversity has become an active field in conservation biology and ecology.Assessment of genetic diversity is important for species conservation. Methods based on genetic differences and phylogenetic relationships can be used to identify protection units including the evolutionarily significant unit and management unit. Thus, it is very useful in determing the candidate for priority conservation. The rapidly developed of DNA barcode technology in recent years provides an important tools for assessing genetic diversity. This method uses a relatively conserved mitochondrial segment but with enough variation as a universal molecular marker to quickly and accurately assess orgnism’s genetic diversity. It has great potential applications in conservation biology.Species distribution models (SDMs) can predicte species’ potential distribution. This model not only assesses the species distribution under current climate conditions, but also predicts the distribution pattern under past and future climate conditions. Compared with the traditional assessment of climate change to species distribution, SDMs are more efficient, and have a suitable degree of accuracy. Therefore, it has been widly used in ecology and biodiversity conservation.In this study, we first combined DNA barcodes and SDMs to predict the impacts of climate changes on the frog Nanorana parkeri, which is endemic to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Barcoding identifies major lineages W and E. Lineage W has a single origin in a refugium. Meanwhile, populations of Lineage E derive from three refugia. All refugia locate in river valleys and greatly contribute to the formation of current intraspecific genetic diversity pattern. Species distribution models suggest that global climate changes will greatly influence N. parkeri, especially for genetic diversity, because two former refugia will fail to provide suitable habitat. Our pipeline provides a novel application of DNA barcoding and has important implications for the conservation of biodiversity in southern areas of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau...