Print PageChestnuts (Castanea) are ecologically and economically important species. We studied the biogeography of seven chestnut species from around the world and provided climatic matching of three Chinese species to North America for the purpose of American chestnut (C. dentata) restoration following its destruction by chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica). Chestnut distribution was established using published range maps and literature. Climatic constraints were analyzed for each species using principal component analysis (PCA) of fourteen bioclimatic variables. Climatic envelope matching was performed for three Chinese species using Maxent modeling to predict corresponding suitable climate zones for those species in North America.
Results/Conclusions
A worldwide chestnut distribution map was produced and the general biology for each of the various species was compared. Chestnuts are primarily distributed in the warm-temperate and subtropical zones in the northern hemisphere. PCA results revealed that thermal gradient was the primary control of chestnut distribution. Climatic spaces of different species overlap with one another at different degrees, but strong similarities are shown especially between Chinese species and American species. Climatic envelope matching suggested that large areas in eastern North America have favorable climate for Chinese species. The general biological traits and climatic limits of the seven chestnut species are very similar. The predictions of Chinese species climatic range corresponded with most of the historical American chestnut range. Thus, a regionally adapted, blight-resistant, introgressed hybrid American chestnut appears feasible if a sufficiently diverse array of Chinese chestnut germplasm is used as a source of blight resistance. Our study provided a between-continent climate matching approach to facilitate the range-wide species restoration, which can be readily applied in planning the restoration of other threatened or endangered species.
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