Biology subjects

Cimatti, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Cimatti, M..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Climate risk for Italian habitats

Climate change is a major driver of global biodiversity loss, and Europe is no exception with several areas exposed to high climate velocity and/or magnitude. Within the rapidly warming Europe, Italy is facing particularly high risk as part of the Mediterranean region with potentially dramatic consequences for its diverse habitat types. While species-level effects of climate risk are widely investigated, habitat-level exposure to climate change has rarely been assessed. This reduces the comprehensiveness of habitat state assessment under the Habitats Directive, and risks creating a blind spot on Protected Area effectiveness. Here we quantified the future (year 2050) climatic exposure of 139 EUNIS level-3 habitats across Italy, using two complementary metrics: analog velocity and multivariate magnitude. We found that median analog velocity was generally modest (median =0.15; Std = 0.41 km/y), and only a few habitats exceeded the critical velocity threshold of 0.5 km/yr. Instead, magnitude was typically high (median = 6.54; Std = 0.80) and 77% of habitat exceeded the critical threshold of 6.18. We also found a few habitats (2.15%) concurrently facing high velocity and high magnitude of climate change, mainly located in Apulia and Veneto. Mediterranean annual-rich dry grasslands and montane unvegetated inland shores were among the most exposed habitats (magnitudes {approx}7.1-7.3; velocities {approx}0.42-0.66 km/y), while cliff and mountain forest habitats in Sardinia and Sicily showed the lowest exposure. We urge countries to explicitly incorporate habitat-level exposure as part of national protection and restoration plans.

systems biology↗

bioRxiv2025

Beyond species-level planning: The role of bioclimatic variation within species distributions

Conserving biodiversity under a changing climate is a complex challenge that requires comprehensive conservation planning approaches accounting for both current biodiversity patterns and the diverse ecological and environmental changes that species and ecosystems are likely to encounter over time. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) offers a strategic framework to meet this challenge by prioritizing areas that promote species persistence and ecological resilience. Traditionally, SCP focuses on conserving adequate amounts of species distributions to ensure their long-term persistence. More recently, partitioning species distributions into bioclimatic components has emerged to explicitly represent niche variability, enhancing adaptive capacity by preserving local adaptations and genetic diversity across environmental gradients. Despite this conceptual progress, empirical comparisons of species-level and bioclimatic component prioritization remain scarce. This study aimed to compare species-level and bioclimatic component prioritization by assessing their trade-offs and effectiveness in supporting species persistence and ecological resilience. Specifically, we aimed to (i) assess the surrogacy between species-level and bioclimatic component prioritizations, (ii) examine their spatial overlap and divergence, and (iii) quantify and compare environmental heterogeneity within priority areas identified by each approach. We found that species-level and bioclimatic component prioritizations act as reasonable surrogates for one another overall, but species-level prioritization tended to underrepresent the least-covered bioclimatic components, with failures to capture certain components in the top-ranked areas. Spatial overlap between the two approaches was generally high, though it declined with more restrictive thresholds and under future conditions. Additionally, bioclimatic component prioritizations consistently captured higher within-group multivariate dispersion in environmental heterogeneity in selected areas. Our findings highlight that bioclimatic component prioritization captures greater environmental heterogeneity and complements species-based approaches by better representing niche diversity. Integrating both strategies may offer a more robust path toward climate-resilient conservation planning that accounts for ecological requirements and environmental variation.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Synergies and trade-offs between maintaining climate niche variability and preserving climate stability

The impact of climate change on biodiversity accelerates, calling for climate resilient conservation strategies such as protecting areas of high climatic stability (i.e. climate refugia) or protecting the variability of species climatic niches (to preserve adaptive potential). Developing a spatial framework that integrates both strategies, we identify priorities to protect climatic niche components of 1,207 European vertebrates. Priority areas for protecting climatic niches under low climate velocity or low magnitude were respectively found in mountainous/southern regions and in northern/eastern Europe. These synergy areas overlapped by 48-73% with single-objective prioritizations focused on either niche components or climatic stability. Trade-offs occur where climatic niches diversity is high but climate stability is low, such as eastern Europe (velocity) or the Mediterranean and North Fennoscandia (magnitude). Our results reveal spatial mismatches between climate refugia and spatial priorities to preserve adaptive potential, emphasizing the need to combine both strategies in conservation planning.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Opportunities and challenges for applying Key BiodiversityAreas Criterion E at large spatial scales

Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are a cornerstone of global biodiversity conservation, influencing international strategic plans and helping protect thousands of species. KBAs are identified through quantitative criteria, among which the most recent is Criterion E. KBA Criterion E uses Spatial Conservation Prioritization techniques to identify highly irreplaceable sites, representing a promising tool for effective expansion of the KBA network. However, it has rarely been tested or applied at large scales. Here, we carried out a continental application of KBA Criterion E in Europe, using Species Distribution Models (SDMs) for 5,529 species of insects and 972 tetrapods. We stress-tested the application of Criterion E by changing the following settings: irreplaceability threshold, metrics of irreplaceability, representation targets, spatial resolution, and cost of planning units. Under the standard Criterion E settings, we identified 23 potential KBAs for insects, mostly along northern European coasts, and 88 for tetrapods, mostly concentrated in Mediterranean islands and southern Europe. These sites slightly overlapped with existing KBAs, showing that Criterion E can capture biodiversity patterns overlooked by other criteria. Our results also showed that the identification of highly irreplaceable areas is very sensitive to analytical choices. The strict irreplaceability threshold currently required, associated with the definition of representation targets, limited the selection of important sites almost exclusively to those containing very narrow-range species, and when such species were absent, important sites were preferentially selected on coasts, where the cost of planning units (represented by land extent) was minimized. Our analysis showed both opportunities and challenges of Criterion E and its applications with SDMs. We propose potential adjustments to the definition and guidelines of Criterion E, to improve its applicability at large spatial scales and on different taxa. Improvements of KBA Criterion E will ensure that KBAs continue to substantially contribute to the global conservation of biodiversity.

zoology↗

bioRxiv2024

The accelerating exposure of European protected areas to climate change

1.All ecosystems are affected by climate change, but differences in the pace of change will render some areas more exposed than others. Such spatial patterns of risk are important when assessing the continued functionality of protected area (PA) networks or planning for their expansion. Europe is undertaking an expansion of the PA network to cover 30% of its land and sea surface, but this must account for climate risk. Here, we estimate four metrics of future climate risk across Europe - local velocity, distance velocity, magnitude, and residence time - and assess the level of climate exposure of European PAs vs non-protected control sites. We also evaluate the intensity of climate risks on >1,000 European species of conservation concern, associated with Natura2000 sites. Our results show large spatial differences in climate change exposure across Europe, with faster pace and farther shifts in climate in the Boreal, Steppic, and Pannonian regions but slower changes in the Mediterranean, Alpine, Artic, and Macronesian regions. Climate change magnitude was higher for the Alpine, Mediterranean, and Steppic regions, implying large local differences between present and future climate. These spatial risk patterns were largely consistent across scenarios, but with up to three times higher risk under the most pessimistic vs the most optimistic scenario. Large variation in climate exposure for species of conservation concern was revealed, including 11 species which are highly dependent on Natura2000 sites and predicted to experience rapid climate change. Our results provide guidance for managing European PAs, and expanding their coverage, by pinpointing areas offering more stable climates. We emphasize the need for connectivity across the network, to support species adaption via range shifting. This is especially the case in areas facing high climate change magnitude but low climate velocity, implying that climate conditions similar to current ones will be found nearby.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Areas of high risk for mammalian biodiversity and Nature's Contributions to People under global warming

Climate change has reached unprecedented levels, causing frequent extreme events like droughts and fires. Combined with land-use change, this crisis has impacted biodiversity, increasing species extinction rates, and Natures Contributions to People (NCP), degrading ecosystem functions. We developed a comparative extinction risk model for mammals sensitive to fire, drought, and extreme temperatures, utilizing a Random Forest algorithm to predict future extinction probabilities under different climatic scenarios. We then identified high-risk areas for both mammals and NCP under global warming, aiming to find synergies between biodiversity conservation and NCP preservation. Our results show that 288 out of 454 species (63%) face an increased extinction risk (mean increase 0.28), while 166 species (37%) show a predicted decrease (mean decrease 0.20) under the extreme "Fossil-fueled development" scenario. The highest risk increase was observed in Malaysia, Western Indonesia, Madagascar, Eastern Australia, and South Africa, under both pessimistic and optimistic ("Sustainability") scenarios. These regions also represent high-risk areas for several NCP: freshwater regulation, air quality, mitigation of extreme events. Preserving these high-risk regions is crucial for reducing habitat loss and human-induced extinctions. Safeguarding these ecosystems, which provide vital contributions like carbon storage, clean water, and extreme fire mitigation, should be a high priority. These regions warrant targeted policy and management interventions, including sustainable land-use practices and climate adaptation actions, to benefit both biodiversity and human well-being.

ecology↗