Future climatically suitable areas for bats in South Asia

Climate change majorly impacts biodiversity in diverse regions across the world, including South Asia, a megadiverse area with heterogeneous climatic and vegetation regions. However, climate impacts on bats in this region are not well‐studied, and it is unclear whether climate effects will follow patterns predicted in other regions. We address this by assessing projected near‐future changes in climatically suitable areas for 110 bat species from South Asia. We used ensemble ecological niche modelling with four algorithms (random forests, artificial neural networks, multivariate adaptive regression splines and maximum entropy) to define climatically suitable areas under current conditions (1970–2000). We then extrapolated near future (2041–2060) suitable areas under four projected scenarios (combining two global climate models and two shared socioeconomic pathways, SSP2: middle‐of‐the‐road and SSP5: fossil‐fuelled development). Projected future changes in suitable areas varied across spe..., There are 150 recognized bat species in South Asia (Srinivasulu et al., 2023) but we a priori excluded the four species endemic to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands given the geographic isolation of the islands from the rest of the South Asian landmass. Species were identified based on current taxonomic information at the time of analysis (Srinivasulu et al., 2021). We also limited our study to species for which we could gather five or more occurrence localities across South Asia, with a minimum distance between occurrences of 5 km. Presence-only occurrence data for these species were collected from published (Bates & Harrison, 1997; Srinivasulu & Srinivasulu, 2012; Srinivasulu et al., 2021), unpublished sources (records collected during field surveys conducted in India between 2002 and 2022, and records communicated by collaborators and citizen scientists in the region confirmed by photographic or other evidence), and GBIF records [accessed July 2022]. Records of specimens housed..., Occurrence localities for each species are given in a CSV (comma separated values) file. These files can be accessed using any spreadsheet software (we use Microsoft Excel but Google Sheets and OpenOffice Calc are also usable).
Bioclimatic variables are uploaded as layered TIFF (Tag Image File Format) files for each climate scenario. These files can be accessed using any GIS software (we use QGIS and R).
The results of this analysis are also provided as XLSX files (which can also be opened in any spreadsheet software)., # **Varied projected changes in near-future climatically suitable areas for bats in South Asia**

This dataset contains ocurrence localities and bioclimatic variables used in an ensemble ecological niche modelling analysis of bats in South Asia.

## Data and file structure

Data is split into two parts. The occurrence localities for each species are provided in a CSV file with the following columns: Family, Species, Latitude, Longitude, Location, Source. Locations have been corrected for consistency with nearest landmarks where necessary (for instance, if the coordinates point to a spot in a forest, the nearest settlement and the distance may be given as a location).

Bioclimatic variables are provided as a layered TIFF file. This file can be opened in any GIS software, and each layer of the file is one bioclimatic variable (labelled BIOX, where X is 1 - 19). For reference to the names and definitions of bioclimatic variables, visit: [https://www.worldclim.org/data/bioclim.html](https:/...