O EFEITO ATUAL E FUTURO DE UMA GRAMÍNEA AFRICANA INVASORA SOBRE UMA PLANTA AMEAÇADA DO CERRADO BRASILEIRO

Abstract

Invasive species may benefit from climate change, replacing species and ecosystem functions that human actions have eliminated. Climate change causes changes in phenology, ecological interactions, and community structure. In the Brazilian Cerrado, Urochloa decumbens (Stapf) R.D.Webster Basilisk (Poaceae) negatively affects the growth of vulnerable native plants of this biome, such as Dimorphandra wilsonii Rizzini (Fabaceae), registered on the IUCN list of threatened species and Brazilian flora critically endangered. This study evaluated how the distribution of D. wilsonii would be affected by the potential distribution of U. decumbens. In this work, we modeled the current and future geographic distribution of the species, evaluating the potential of the invasive species and its effects on D. wilsonii. We predicted the distribution of species by integrating 49 climatic and soil variables, which were reduced using a principal component analysis. The results did not indicate a significant change in the current and future climatic distribution of either species. Dimorphandra wilsonii, vulnerable to the establishment of U. decumbens, will remain potentially threatened by the exotic species. Climate and soil showed little climatic impact on the ecological niche overlap of the species, suggesting that other environmental factors and their interactions play a more considerable role. We observed that soil type had some influence on the ecological dynamics of the species from a macroecological perspective. Climate and soil can influence areas for the environmental suitability of the studied species. The interaction of soil and climatic factors was important to determine the geographic distribution of species.