Climate change causes the displacement and shrinking of the optimal habitats of nectar-producing species of Nepeta in Iran.

The negative impacts of global climate change are accelerating the decline of pollinators and nectar-producing plant populations and threatening local and global food security. Iran is ranked as the fourth largest honey producer in the world due to the high diversity of taxa of nectar plants, but little attention has been paid to the conservation assessment of Iranian nectar plant species in the face of climate change. Therefore, predicting the potential distribution of these species is fundamentally important for the development of conservation strategies. In this study, we established the MaxEnt model to assess the consequences of climate change on five Nepeta species as representative of Iranian nectar plants. All species distribution models developed in this study were reliable following the AUC values (≥ 80). Our results show that the temperature and humidity factors such as the mean temperature of the coldest quarter (Bio11), precipitation seasonality (Bio15), precipitation of the wettest quarter (Bio16), and mean temperature of the driest quarter (Bio9), and geological and pedological factors such as elevation, soil organic carbon content, sand content, slope, solar radiation, PH, and silt content are important environmental variables affecting the distribution patterns of the target taxa. The MaxEnt model predicts that the area of the suitable habitats of Nepeta cataria, Nepeta meyeri, Nepeta pungens, and Nepeta saccharata will be reduced under two optimistic and pessimistic scenarios in the 2050s and 2070s. Under RCP 2.6, suitable habitats for Nepeta fissa are projected to decrease by 22.57% by 2050 and by 25.06% by 2070. It decreases by 14.63% under RCP 8.5 and increases by 16.66% in the 2070s and 2050s. Regardless, regular monitoring and in situ as well as ex situ conservation is the main management action for the conservation of target taxa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]