Modeling Climate Change Impacts on a Socioeconomically Vital Plant: The Case of Comanthera elegans (Goldenfoot Flower)

Comanthera elegans is a threatened, endemic species of the campos rupestres of the Espinhaço Mountain Range—a region recognized as a biodiversity hotspot—and has great ecological and societal relevance to local traditional communities. Despite the importance of this species in these systems, the effects of climate change on its distribution remain relatively unknown. We employed the MaxEnt algorithm to model the current potential geographic distribution and the habitat suitability of this species under future climate scenarios to address this knowledge gap. We considered the SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios, based on four global climate models (MRI-ESM2-0, MIROC6, EC-Earth3-Veg, and CMCC-ESM2). The model exhibited high performance, indicating a strong affinity of the species for environments with high rainfall seasonality and mild temperatures. Our models predict a substantial loss of suitable habitat for C. elegans under scenarios of future climate change, particularly under high greenhouse gas emission scenarios, where high-suitability areas could be reduced by as much as 95% by 2060. Our results highlight the need for the implementation of conservation actions, including the expansion or creation of protected areas in climate refugia, alongside efforts to promote the development of cultivation techniques and regulations on harvesting practices, in order to mitigate the species' vulnerability to climate change.