Modeling of climate change effects on distribution of Aegilops L. (Poaceae) toward biodiversity conservation in Iran

The demand for food resources is increasing quickly because of growth in human populations; therefore, food security may become one of the largest human challenges for this century. Due to the low genetic diversity of the most crop plants, they have the low tolerance against the climatic changes challenge. Crop wild relatives (CWRs) are the most valuable plant genetic resources (PGR) for the conservation of genetic diversity in crops. However, climate change is an added pressure on biodiversity, particularly on this valuable group of plants. Some of the wild relative of crop plants including Aegilops species are growing in Iran and the country has the special importance in view of their conservation. The important CWR Aegilops genus has been investigated for climate change effects. MaxEnt modeling method was applied to predict the spatial distribution of four Aegilops species under different climatic scenarios (RCP ۲.۶ and RCP ۸.۵) of ۲۰۵۰ and ۲۰۸۰. According to the findings mean annual temperature and annual precipitation were identified as most important factors on the species distribution. According to our finding all species showed reduction and expansion responses under all future climatic scenarios. However, the range change was negative for some species (i.e. A. cylindrica Host, A. speltoides Tausch , A. tauschii Coss.) and positive for A. crassa Boiss. ex Hohen. The results of this study emphasize, except A.crassa the in-situ and ex-situ conservation of studied species as gene bank, regular population monitoring and ecological assessment.

کلیدواژه ها:

Conservation ، Crop wild relative ، MaxEnt modeling ، South west Asia