Climate vulnerability assessment of the Espeletia complex on Páramo sky islands in the northern Andes

Some of the largest impacts of climate change are expected in the environmentally heterogeneous and species rich high mountain ecosystems. Among those, the Neotropical alpine grassland above the tree line (c. 2,800 m), known as Páramo, is the fastest evolving biodiversity hotspot on earth, and one of the most threatened. Yet, predicting climate responses of typically slow-growing, long-lived plant linages in this unique high mountain ecosystem remains challenging. Here we coupled climate sensitivity modeling and adaptive potential inferences to efficiently assess climate vulnerability of Espeletia, Páramo’s most iconic, predominant and rapidly evolving plant complex. In order to estimate climate sensitivity, we first modeled the distribution of 28 Espeletia taxa under a niche conservatism scenario using altitude and five current (1970-2000) and future (2050 RCP 8.5) bioclimatic variables across 36 different Páramo complexes in the northern Andes (49 % of the world’s Páramo area). As an ...