Brazil nut journey under future climate change in Amazon

Another relevant result observed concerns the possibility of reversing habitats that would become climatically unsuitable in the near future. Our results suggest that some areas in Fig 3 (in yellow) would become climatically suitable in the last 20 years of the century, specifically between 2080 and 2100. However, Bertholletia excelsa could not access them due to the lack of landscape connectivity, defined based on the parameters of the migration model for the spe- cies. They would be areas suitable climatically, but inaccessible to the species via natural dis- persal. These would be areas that humans could manage the species, considering recovery from active ecological restoration. This pattern is most pronounced in the most pessimistic scenarios (SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5). Discussion The biogeographic distributions of trees in the Amazon are shaped by a combination of fac- tors, such as drought tolerance, biological interactions, edaphic conditions, shade tolerance, and dispersal. Moreover, drought acts more strongly as an environmental filter for adult trees [45, 46]. Plants subjected to higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and increased air tem- perature show changes in photosynthetic production, resulting in changes in their ecophysiol- ogy [47, 48]. Thus, the risk of extinction of the Brazil nut may increase due to its sensitivity to environmental variations [17, 49]. Esquivel-Muelbert et al. investigated whether the floristic and functional composition of intact lowland Amazonian forests has been changing by evaluating records from 106 long-term inven-

tory plots spanning 30 years [50]. One of their results indicated that there had been notable Fig 2. Pearson’s correlation between the trend of changes in suitability and altitude with the data of the simulated colonization events for new areas in the different scenarios. The dashed red line marks the division between the values of loss of suitability (left) and gain (right). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0312308.g002 PLOS ONE Effects of climate change on Brazil nut PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0312308 November 13, 2024 7 / 13