Climate-related range shifts of Ardisia japonica in the Korean Peninsula: a role of dispersal capacity

Background: Many studies about climate-related range shift of plants have focused on understanding the relationship between climatic factors and plant distributions. However, consideration of adaptation factors, such as dispersal and plant physiological processes, is necessary for a more accurate prediction. This study predicted the future distribution of marlberry (Ardisia japonica), a warm-adapted evergreen broadleaved shrub, under climate change in relation to the dispersal ability that is determined by elapsed time for the first seed production. Results: We introduced climate change data under four representative concentration pathway (RCP 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) scenarios from five different global circulation models (GCMs) to simulate the future distributions (2041~2060) of marlberry. Using these 20 different climate data, ensemble forecasts were produced by averaging the future distributions of marlberry in order to minimize the model uncertainties. Then, a dispersal-limited function was applied to the ensemble forecast in order to exam the impact of dispersal capacity on future marlberry distributions. In the dispersal-limited function, elapsed time for the first seed production and possible dispersal distances define the dispersal capacity. The results showed that the current suitable habitats of marlberry expanded toward central coast and southern inland area from the current southern and mid-eastern coast area in Korea. However, given the dispersal-limited function, this experiment showed lower expansions to the central coast area and southern inland area. Conclusions: This study well explains the importance of dispersal capacity in the prediction of future marlberry distribution and can be used as basic information in understanding the climate change effects on the future distributions of Ardisia japonica.