Habitat suitability evaluation of Apis mellifera ssp. in Xinjiang based on optimized MaxEnt model

Climate is an important factor affecting species distribution. Understanding species distribution and its changing trend under climate change scenarios is of great significance for species diversity conservation and conservation planning. Apis mellifera ssp. is an endemic economic bee species distributed in Xinjiang. It is urgent to assess the impact of climate changes on the distribution of A. mellifera ssp., which facing the problems of population reduction and shrinking distribution area. In this paper, the maximum entropy model MaxEnt was used to predict the potential distribution areas of A. mellifera ssp. under different climate scenarios and in different time. The results showed as follows: The simulation accuracy of MaxEnt model (AUC)was 0.994, and the overall simulation level reached above "excellent", indicating that the model in this study had high simulation accuracy, good performance and high recognition of simulation results. The main ecological factors affecting A. mellifera ssp. ranged from the average annual temperature of 1.56~4.95℃, the average temperature of the driest quarter of -13.49~-11.01℃, the precipitation of the wettest month of 38.2~ 46.9 mm, and the precipitation of the driest month of 5.51~6.88 mm. Under the climate situation of relatively low radiative stress of SSP126, A. mellifera ssp. had high adaptability and showed a trend of large area expansion. The distribution of A. mellifera ssp. contracted to a large extent under the relatively high radiative stress of SSP585. The distribution of A. mellifera ssp. was affected by temperature. The changes of temperature were closely related to human production activities and carbon emissions. Therefore, human production activities affect the distribution of A. mellifera ssp. by influencing temperature. At low intensity carbon emissions, the distribution area will expand, while, it will shrink at high intensity carbon emissions.