| Summary: | <i>Akebia trifoliata</i> (Thunb.) Koidz., <i>Akebia trifoliata</i> subsp. <i>australis</i> (Diels) T. Shimizu and <i>Akebia quinata</i> (Houtt.) Decne. are the source plants of the traditional Chinese medicines AKEBIAE CAULIS and AKEBIAE FRUCTUS, and have high pharmaceutical value. However, the resource reserve of these plants has dramatically declined due to habitat destruction, which has seriously affected their adequate supply and sustainable utilization. A poor knowledge of the potential distribution of these medicinal materials would seriously constrain the protective exploitation of wild resources and the establishment of new cultivations. In this study, based on the scenarios of SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5, the maximum entropy model was used to predict the potential distribution of these three <i>Akebia</i> taxa under current and future (2030s, 2050s, 2070s and 2090s) climate conditions. Our findings showed that the potentially suitable areas of these three <i>Akebia</i> taxa were mainly distributed in China at 101.8–121.9° E and 23.5–34.6° N. Temperature played a more significant role than precipitation in affecting the distribution. The dominant bioclimatic variable that affected the distribution of <i>A. trifoliata</i> and <i>A. quinata</i> in China was the minimum temperature of the coldest month (BIO06). For <i>A. trifoliata</i> subsp. <i>australis</i>, the mean diurnal range (BIO02) was the dominant variable influencing its distribution. Compared with current conditions, the moderate- and high-suitability areas of these three <i>Akebia</i> taxa were predicted to shrink towards the core areas, while the low-suitability areas were all observed to increase from the 2030s to the 2090s. With the increase in radiative forcing of SSP, the low-impact areas of these three <i>Akebia</i> taxa showed a decreasing trend as a whole. Our results illustrate the impact of climate change on the distribution of <i>Akebia</i>, and would provide references for the sustainable utilization of <i>Akebia</i>’s resources.
|
|---|