Assessing Bioclimatic Characteristics on Daphne mucronata as a Medicinal Plant in Fars Province, Iran

Identification and assessment of the relationship between medicinal plant species and climatic factors are important lines of research, which provides insights into reasonable exploitation and sustainable development of these species. In addition, multivariate statistical methods have been proved successful in revealing the relationship between climatic factors and the distribution of plant species. Hence, this study aims to investigate bioclimatic characteristics of Daphne mucronata by determining climatic factors in its distribution range in Fars Province, Iran, where this species has a wide spatial distribution (27% of the total area). Towards this aim, 50 climatic variables related to January, April and July were used. To reduce the number of variables and determine the most important factors, Factor Analysis and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were used. The results showed that four principal components namely the temperature, precipitation, cloudiness, and wind components account for 38.56, 32.85, 11.03, and 9.09 % (91.54% in total) of data variance, respectively. The results also indicated that temperature and precipitation had the greatest impact on the species distribution. Moreover, the mean temperature within the species distribution range was about 15°C with minimum precipitation of 379 mm. This research identifies the characteristics of vegetative climate to determine the possibility of expansion and development of this plant in natural areas and provides better management.