Effect of Temperature and Precipitation on Global Mangrove Rhizophora Species Distribution

Climate change influences the distribution of mangroves towards tropical or temperate regions of the world. We hypothesized that Rhizophora species organized along complex spatial and temporal temperature and precipitation gradient. To determine the affinity of different mangroves with climatic parameters, the response of eight Rhizophora species to seven climatic parameters (i.e., annual mean temperature, annual precipitation, maximum temperature of warmest month, minimum temperature of coldest month, temperature annual range and temperature of driest month and precipitation of warmest month) was analyzed with Arc GIS and Maxent software. For temperature and precipitation there was significant difference (p<0.001) among species location. Only R. selala (p<0.001) differed most from the rest taxa in temperature. The jackknife test in Maxent revealed that minimum temperature of coldest month (regularized training gain ~0.71), temperature annual range, (regularized training gain ~0.66) and annual mean temperature (regularized training gain ~0.36) were the most important environmental parameters that determine the occurrence of R. mangle, being the most dominant species. This outcome was further validated by an accuracy of 91%. This implies thattemperature  was a better predictive parameter  than precipitation in the distribution of R. mangle.