Prediction of the potentially suitable areas of Leonurus japonicus with the optimized MaxEnt model

Leonurus japonicus Houtt. is a traditional Chinese medicinal
plant with high medicinal and edible value. Wild L. japonicus resources
have been reduced dramatically in recent years. This study predicted the
response of distribution range of L. japonicus to climate change
in China, which provided the scientific basis for the conservation and
utilization. In this study, 489 occurrence points of L. japonicus were
selected based on GIS technology and spThin package. The default
parameters of the Maxent model were adjusted by using ENMeva1 package of
the R environment, and the optimized Maxent model was used to analyze the
distribution of L. japonicus. When the feature combination in the
model parameters is hing and the regularization multiplier is 1.5, the
Maxent model has a higher degree of optimization. With the AUC of 0.830
our model showed a good predictive performance The results showed that L.
japonicus was widely distributed in the current period. The maximum
temperature of the warmest month, the minimum temperature of the
coldest month, the precipitation of the wettest month, the
precipitation of the driest month and altitude were the main environmental
factors affecting the distribution of L. japonicus. Under the three
climate change scenarios, the suitable distribution area of L. japonicus
will range-shift to high latitudes, indicating that the distribution of L.
japonicus has a strong response to climate change. The regional change
rate is the lowest under the SSP126-2090s scenario and the highest under
the SSP585-2090s scenario.