Summary

This project continues to remain on track and is progressing well. In this report, we provide current species distribution maps for rainforest fauna and maps of spatial patterns of biodiversity to eAtlas and Wet Tropics Management Authority. We complete a case study testing the ability of species distribution models calibrated in the Wet Tropics to predict suitable environments further north on Cape York Peninsula. We find a moderate level of transferability for the most models generated for test species, and that simple models (in terms of number of parameters and complexity of functions) are generally more transferable than complex models. The result supports the idea that species’ distribution models have the capacity to provide meaningful predictions of species’ distributions under future climate change. We use predictive impact modelling of climate change on rainforest fauna to model distributions of 202 rainforest vertebrates and project these onto climate surfaces representing 7 global climate models. We report on current results on physiological tolerances of microhylid frogs and arboreal mammals. We document early maximum, minimum and preferred temperatures of microhylids, as well as other physiological parameters, that play a role in determining distribution. We find a pattern of response to high ambient temperature in arboreal mammals that is rapid and linear meaning these species will be significantly impacted by climate change. The next milestones report will be a complete summary of all findings for objects stated under this project 2.5ii.4