In this study, we used two types of species distribution modelling (correlative and mechanistic) in order to evaluate the effects of climate change on the geographic distribution of Rhinella granulosa (Spix, 1824), distributed in the Caatinga biome. We tested the prediction that amphibians distributed in warm weather will have their spatial distribution constrained by high temperatures in the future. Using the correlation approach, we observed that the potential distribution generated by Euclidian Distance showed more conservative areas (e.g. with a smaller distance from optimum niche) limiting it to the current distribution of the species (e.g. Caatinga), and to small areas in the Cerrado biome. The mechanistic approach showed a less conservative result, in which the habitat indicated as suitable for R. granulosa comprised a large extension of South America, encompassing a contiguous area. In general, we observed that the spatial distribution of R. granulosa would not be strongly affected by climate change, at least until 2080. Probably, this species has a tolerant physiology to high temperatures and shows adaptations that support dry and hot weather.
Species distribution modelling; thermal tolerance; correlative model; mechanistic model
