Distribution of Pipistrellus pipistrellus (Schreber, 1774) under the climate change: Identifying climate refugia and assessing protected areas effectiveness

Conservation of biodiversity under changing environment is a real challenge for conservation biologists. Previous studies have shown that climate change will have negative impacts on bat species. However very little is known about the potential impacts of climate change on bats of Iran. Pipistrellus pipistrellus is a small insectivore bat which live in vast area in Iran. Despite being widespread, the species ecology remains unknown. In the present study we predicted the impacts of climate change on the species distribution, identified future climate refugia for the species and assessed protected areas effectiveness in covering the species suitable habitats. We applied an ensemble approach using four distribution modeling methods (Generalized Linear Models, Generalized Additive Models, Maximum Entropy Modelling and Random Forest). then projected the ensemble model in to the future. We found that the species will lose 118551 km2 of its suitable habitats while gaining 59303 km2 new climatically suitable habitats. Results showed that 7.1 percent of the species suitable habitats covered by protected areas under current climatic condition but in the future suitable habitats will decrease to 6.7 and 6.2 percent under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 respectively. Climatically stable habitats identified in this study can play important role in species survival under climate change thus they have high priority for conservation.