Late Quaternary Climatic Shifts Reshaped Global Canid Suitability and Potential Overlap
Ty J. Werdel, Max R. LarreurABSTRACT
Aim
To test whether Late Quaternary climatic shifts altered climatically suitable area, modelled climatic richness and potential climatic overlap among wild canids globally.
Location
Global.
Methods
We modelled climatic suitability for 34 wild canid species across the Last Glacial Maximum, Mid‐Holocene and modern period using spatially filtered occurrence records, five bioclimatic predictors and MaxEnt species distribution models. Continuous projections were thresholded using species‐specific 10th‐percentile presence thresholds, with 5th‐ and 20th‐percentile thresholds used only for supplementary sensitivity analyses. We quantified species‐level suitable‐area change, modelled climatic richness, pairwise overlap in binary suitable area and continuous suitability and sensitivity to threshold choice.
Results
Responses were strongly species‐specific. Modern suitable area increased most for widespread northern and temperate species including grey wolf (+18.30 million km 2 ), red fox (+13.74 million km 2 ), Arctic fox (+5.55 million km 2 ), coyote (+5.45 million km 2 ), common raccoon dog (+4.02 million km 2 ) and golden jackal (+3.81 million km 2 ). Suitable area declined most for African wild dog (−4.98 million km 2 ), side‐striped jackal (−3.28 million km 2 ), crab‐eating fox (−3.16 million km 2 ), black‐backed jackal (−2.75 million km 2 ), maned wolf (−2.61 million km 2 ) and bat‐eared fox (−2.04 million km 2 ). Mean modelled climatic richness increased from the Last Glacial Maximum to the modern period, and pairwise overlap increased most among widespread Holarctic and generalist taxa while declining among several African and South American species pairs. Major species‐level patterns were robust to threshold choice.
Main Conclusions
Late Quaternary climatic shifts reorganized canid climatic suitability and potential overlap rather than producing uniform gains or losses. Thresholded climatically suitable area increased from the Last Glacial Maximum to the modern period for several widespread temperate, northern and Holarctic species, but decreased or shifted geographically for several tropical, subtropical and regionally constrained species. These outputs represent potential climatic suitability and overlap conditional on an assumed degree of climatic niche stability, not realized historical ranges or direct ecological interactions.