Predicting the impacts of climate change on Papio baboon biogeography: are widespread, generalist primates ‘safe’?

Aims: To explore whether wide-ranging, generalist primates like baboons can be presumed ‘resilient’ in the face of climate change. We identify environmental variables influencing baboons’ current distributions and predict their future potential distributions under different climate change scenarios.
Location: Africa and Arabia.
Taxon: Baboons, Papio spp.
Methods: We used localities for olive, yellow, Guinea, hamadryas, chacma and Kinda baboons together with high-resolution data on bioclimatic variables, altitude and vegetation to construct species distribution models (SDMs). These SDMs were run under current and future conditions, with future models based on three General Circulation Models (MIROC-ESM, CCSM4 and HadGEM2-ES) under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.5 and 6.0) for 2050 and 2070 to explore a range of different possible futures.
Results: All SDMs produced AUC values >0.916 suggesting excellent overall performance. Altitude was the most important variabl...