Abstract:
Galinsoga parviflora is an annual herbaceous plant originating in South America, and has caused great harm to agriculture in China. However, the distribution and influence of this invader are poorly documented yet. Besides, it is still unclear how the changing climate will affect the expansion of G. parviflora in China. With these questions in mind, we studied the effects of climate change on its future geographical distributions in China using maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model based on the climatic data lately released by the 5th report of IPCC. We built MaxEnt models to predict the potential distribution areas of G. parviflora under current and future (2050s and 2080s) climatic scenarios, using six least correlated climatic variables and 11228 occurrences. Finally, the MaxEnt prediction achieved a high accuracy of statistically significant AUC value of 0.804, and showed that the distribution of G. parviflora was mainly influenced by temperature (i.e., bio_1, bio_4, bio_6, bio_7, bio_9, bio_10 and bio_11). The results showed that high suitable areas for G. parviflora mainly located in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Fujian and Taiwan. These areas are severely influenced by G. parviflora currently. In the context of climate change, its suitable area in China tends to contract in the future (2050s and 2080s). Its suitable area tends to disappear in southern and northern China, but the north edge of its suitable area would further expand into areas with high latitude. Overall, by the end of the century, its suitable area will be reduced and move northward in China. Our study suggests that G. parviflora has high invasion potential on the east of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of China; however, to some extent, the ongoing climate change would inhibit its expansion in China.
