Edwards Group: Forecasting climate change impacts on Andean endemics and microendemics
Supervisor
Professor David Edwards
Overview:
This project will model the combined effects of climate change and habitat loss on Neotropical orchids, identifying extinction risks, climate refugia, and conservation priorities though an integrative framework combining species distribution, landscape, and microclimate modelling. It will benefit from a growing database constructed by the supervisory team of over half a million curated distributional records of Neotropical orchids.
Importance of Research:
Understanding the joint effects of climate change and habitat loss on narrowly distributed species, including endemic orchids, is a critical conservation priority, especially in global biodiversity hotspots like the Neotropics. Many orchid species are disproportionately at risk due to their limited geographic ranges, specialized ecological requirements, and poor dispersal abilities. Yet, these species are often overlooked in large-scale conservation planning, and their extinction could lead to irreversible losses of evolutionary history and ecosystem function. This research addresses this key knowledge gap by integrating climate modelling with land-use change at landscape scale, and microclimate data to model extinction risk more realistically. By identifying vulnerable species and spatial priorities for conservation, the project provides urgently needed tools to guide targeted conservation action, inform biodiversity policy frameworks (e.g. Global Biodiversity Framework, 30x30), and evidence-based conservation actions to ensure that high-risk species are in the face of accelerating environmental change.
Summary of research project:
The Neotropics is a global biodiversity hotspot, home to tens of thousands of endemic plant species with narrow climatic tolerances. These species, particularly orchids, are highly sensitive to environmental change, yet we lack sufficient understanding of how climate and land-use change will jointly shape their future distributions and extinction risk. This PhD project will assess how climate change, forest loss, and habitat fragmentation interact to affect the persistence of narrow-ranged orchids across the Andes. It will integrate climate forecasting, landscape metrics, and microclimate data to model species’ distributions and ecological niches, and then to identify elevational or geographic shifts under future scenarios. Field and remotely-sensed data will be used to map habitat quality, quantify landscape connectivity, and locate microclimatic refugia, in combination with our database of over half a million curated distributional records of Neotropical orchids. We expect that this work will generate the first spatially explicit extinction risk models for endemic orchid species using an integrative framework between climate modelling, landscape ecology, and microclimate data, offering critical tools for conserving high-risk species in the face of global change.
What will the successful applicant do?
- Receive training in orchid taxonomy, conservation, and ecological modelling
- Collect and use cutting-edga data on forest cover, microclimate, and orchid occurrences in modelling.
- Build species distribution models incorporating future climate projections
- Quantify habitat quality and fragmentation using remote sensing and landscape ecology tools
- Evaluate species vulnerability across scenarios of climate and forest change
- Identify climate refugia and conservation priorities for microendemic orchids
- Contribute to scientific publications and and science-based policy recommendations
References:
Parra-Sanchez E, Latombe G, Mills SC, Socolar JB, Edwards FA, Martinez-Revelo D, Perez-Escobar OA, Davies RW, Bousfield CG, Cerullo G, Ochoa-Quintero JM, Haugaasen T, Barlow J, Freckleton RP, Edwards DP (2025) Tropical land-use change disrupts zeta-diversity across taxa. Global Change Biology 31:e70245 DOI:10.1111/gcb.70245
Parra-Sanchez E, Freckleton RP, Hethcoat MG, Ochoa-Quintero JM, Edwards DP (2024) Transformation of natural habitat disrupts biogeographical patterns of orchid diversity. Biological Conservation 292: 110538 DOI:10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110538
Parra-Sanchez E, Perez-Escobar O, Edwards DP (2023) Neutral-based overrule niche-based processes in shaping tropical montane orchid communities across spatial scales. Journal of Ecology 111: 1614-1628 DOI:10.1111/1365-2745.14140
Parra-Sanchez E, Restrepo E, Barrera Y, Ordonez-Blanco C, Edwards DP (2024) Lepanthes chalalensis (Pleurothallindinae), a new species endemic to the Santander Department in Colombia. Lankesteriana 24:131-140 DOI:10.15517/lank.v24i2.56321
Pérez-Escobar, O. A., Chomicki, G., Condamine, F. L., Karremans, A. P., Bogarín, D., Matzke, N. J., Silvestro, D., & Antonelli, A. (2017). Recent origin and rapid speciation of neotropical orchids in the world's richest plant biodiversity hotspot. New Phytologist, 215(2), 891–905. DOI:10.1111/nph.14629
Pillet, M., Goettsch, B., Merow, C. et al. Elevated extinction risk of cacti under climate change. Nature Plants 8, 366–372 (2022). DOI:10.1038/s41477-022-01130-0
Senior RA, Hill JK, Edwards DP (2019) Global loss of climate connectivity in tropical forests. Nature Climate Change 9: 623-626 DOI:10.1038/s41558-019-0529-2