Impacts of climate change on the global distribution of Cyclocarya paliurus.

Climate change is significantly affecting the distribution of plants worldwide. Cyclocarya paliurus (Batal.) Iljinsk. (Juglandaceae), a rare deciduous tree, is a traditional nutraceutical tea owing to its health benefits and appealing flavor. In this study, climatic factors and soil physio-chemical factors were screened using MaxEnt modeling, and suitable habitat areas during three historical periods and under two climatic change scenarios were predicted based on 425 occurrence records. MaxEnt model performance was excellent, showing a high prediction ability, with an average area under curve value of 0.9786 ± 0.0025 and true skill statistic index of 0.9556. Eleven climatic factors, as well as four soil physio-chemical factors, were selected based on jackknife resampling. The habitat suitability simulation for three historical periods (last glacial maximum, mid-Holocene, and 1960–1990) showed that although the high-suitability area for C. paliurus decreased during the three periods, the combined intermediate- and high-suitability area increased. The analysis of the suitable habitat distributions under two global warming scenarios (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5) showed a decline in the suitable habitat area of C. paliurus in response to climatic warming. Our results provide basic references for the management of this species in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]