Brazil nut journey under future climate change in Amazon

RESEARCH ARTICLE Brazil nut journey under future climate change in Amazon Luciano J. S. AnjosID1,2☯*, Gabriela S. R. Gonc¸alves3☯, Vı´tor A. B. DutraID2☯, Amanda G. RosaID2‡, Lucyana B. Santos4‡, Ma´rcia N. R. Barros2‡, Everaldo B. de SouzaID1,2‡, Peter M. de Toledo5‡ 1 Faculdade de Meteorologia, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Federal do Para´ —UFPA, Bele´ m, Para´, Brazil, 2 Programa de Po´s-Graduac¸ão em Ciências Ambientais, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Federal do Para´ —UFPA, Bele´ m, Para´ , Brazil, 3 Laborato´rio de Biogeografia da Conservac¸ão e Macroecologia, Instituto de Ciências Biolo´ gicas, Universidade Federal do Para´ —UFPA, Bele´m, Para´ , Brazil, 4 Programa de Po´ s-Graduac¸ão em Ciências Ambientais, Universidade do Estado do Para´—UEPA, Bele´ m, Para´ , Brazil, 5 Divisão de Impactos, Adaptac¸ão e Vulnerabilidade, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais —INPE, São Jose´ dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. ‡ AGR, LBS, MNRB, EBS and PMT also contributed equally to this work. * ljsanjos@gmail.com Abstract Climate change is among the principal threats to global terrestrial biodiversity, especially to megadiverse ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest. In this study, we investigate how it could affect an iconic forest species—Bertholletia excelsa—(the Brazil nut) which has val- ues in multiple dimensions in an Amazonian context. We used an ensemble from various distribution modeling methods designed for four different climate scenarios from CMIP6 by

the end of the century. Then, we simulate how spatial dynamics under climate change, including explicitly dispersal events, can affect the persistence, colonization, and potential extinction of Bertholletia excelsa in the future. Our results show that by the end of the cen- tury there would be a generalized loss of suitability on the Amazon biome, regardless of the climate scenario evaluated, which could promote a significant loss (up to 94%) of the area available for the species via extinction. Our results also show that, in the future, the species would colonize higher altitudes in search of favorable conditions for its survival. Finally, we detected that areas that had previously become unsuitable because of climate change would have favorable conditions by the end of the century. Such an outcome could be useful in fostering an active restoration agenda that can mitigate the negative effects of climate change on species in this study. Introduction Human-induced climatic change has been emphasized as a significant threat to biodiversity [1]. Climate change can cause effects along the various levels of biodiversity organization, such as on individual organisms, populations, communities, ecosystems, and biomes [2]. Such changes can affect the survival rate of species, alter their phenological dynamics and life history PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0312308 November 13, 2024 1 / 13 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Anjos LJS, Gonc¸alves GSR, Dutra VAB, Rosa AG, Santos LB, Barros MNR, et al. (2024)

Brazil nut journey under future climate change in Amazon. PLoS ONE 19(11): e0312308. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0312308 Editor: Marcela Pagano, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, BRAZIL Received: February 29, 2024 Accepted: October 3, 2024 Published: November 13, 2024 Copyright: © 2024 Anjos et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The work in question received two types of public funding resources from Brazilian agencies for scientific research, as detailed below. LJSA - Postdoctoral grant Specific grant numbers: 88887.461811/2019-00 Coordenac¸ão de Aperfeic¸oamento de Pessoal de Nı´vel Superior https://www.gov.br/capes/pt-br LJSA – Payment of fee publication Specific grant numbers: EDITAL 01/ 2023 – PROPESP Pro´-Reitoria de Pesquisa e Po´s-