Coupling Climate, Landscape, and Demography to Predict the Future of Mainland Tropical Highland Anoles

In the future, there will be an increased risk of extinction of populations of ectotherms due to climate warming and habitat loss and fragmentation. The anole lizards inhabiting South American highlands are an example of those organisms with particularities in their thermal biology and habitat requirements which make them prone to extinction in the future. Under an integrative approach of species distribution modeling, landscape structure, and demographic response, we describe the potential effects of future changes in climate and habitat on the future persistence of four species of these lizards. Current climatic niches of A. heterodermus and A. richteri were similar to each other but differed from those of A. quimbaya and A. tequendama . Future climatic niche models showed an increase in the area of occurrence of all species except A. heterodermus . Integrating landscape structure with climatic models, only one species maintained an increase in its distribution area. When we incorporated the demographic response associated with habitat size, we found an increase in the area subjected to a demographic strategy less resilient in the future. This approach shows how the modeling of future extinction vulnerability in terms of area of occupancy changes substantially when taking into account more than one additive factor of potential change and, likewise, predicts a considerable extinction vulnerability for higher elevation species and the largest current distribution area.