Habitat Suitability and Areal Dynamics of Rare Desert Species of Myxomycetes of the Genus Didymium under Global Climate Change in Asia

The ability to determine the spatial distribution of rare species is critical to understanding the environmental factors that influence them. Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modeling of spatial distributions addresses this problem by allowing inferences about species distributions under environmental change from occurrence data. Using this method, the current and potential geographic distributions of two rare species of desert myxomycetes, Didymium mexicanum and Didymium nullifilum were mapped. Models of potential global species distributions were created using bioclimatic data and MaxEnt software to model species habitat suitability under the current conditions (~1950–2000) and under projected changes in the future climate (2100 AD) based on 18 spatial distribution points for D. mexicanum and four points for D. nullifilum. A detailed morphological description is given for the species. We identified the species D. mexicanum for the first time in Asia.