Abstract:
Climate change has made medicinal plants more vulnerable to habitat changes, affecting both
their medicinal properties and accessibility and increasing their risk of extinction. It is thus
necessary to understand how current and future climate conditions may affect the suitable
habitats of threatened medicinal plants and how they may respond to climate change for
long-term conservation planning. To contribute to this, our study aimed to predict suitable
habitats for the native and vulnerable medicinal tree species, Diospyros blancoi A. DC., locally
known as kamagong, in the Philippines. Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modeling was used to
project the current and future habitat suitability of the species based on its occurrence records
and spatially associated bioclimatic data. Changes in the habitat suitability of the species were
predicted for 2071-2100 under one future climate scenario, SSP5–8.5. The resulting models
revealed higher suitability on mountains along the fringes of major islands of the Philippines.
Climatic factors that promote the habitat suitability of D. blancoi include moderate mean annual
air temperature, low to moderate isothermality, low to moderate mean diurnal temperature range,
and moderate to high precipitation. Future climatic projection showed higher losses in
low-altitude areas and fewer gains in high-altitude areas, indicating an upward distribution shift
in the future. This may consequently reduce its accessibility and availability to human
populations relying on it for treatment, especially in low-lying rural areas.
