The fate of páramo plant assemblages in the sky islands of the northern Andes - Appendix S1. Vegetation and occurrence data used in this study

Aims: Assessing climate change impacts on biodiversity is a main scientific challenge, especially in the tropics, therefore, we predicted the future of plant species and communities on the unique páramo sky islands. We implemented the Spatially Explicit Species Assemblage Modelling framework, by i) calculating species’ maximum dispersal distance, ii) modelling species distributions at present up to 2100, iii) assembling models into communities. Finally, we assessed the vulnerability of sky islands based on richness and composition changes.

Location: Ecuadorian super-páramo (>4200 m)

Methods: Using species trait data, the maximum dispersal distance of 435 species was calculated. Species distribution models (SDM) were fitted to obtain current and future distribution predictions based on dispersal and bioclimatic factors. The final assemblages for present and 2100 were achieved by stacking all probabilistic SDMs and applying the probability ranking rule. The vulnerability of each ...