Indicators of changes in the distribution of Rhododendron species in China under climate change

We calculated species range change, elevation shift, latitude shift, niche overlap, number of habitat patches change and mean area of habitat patches change under current and future scenarios (SSP126, SSP245, SSP585).Species range change was calculated as follows: ((future suitable habitat – current suitable habitat) / current suitable habitat) × 100%; niche overlap indicated the degree of the overlap between current and future suitable habitat.

Elevation and latitude shifts were computed using the centroid. The number of patches represented the total number of all individual patches within the suitable area of each species, while the mean patch area was calculated as the average area of these separate patches (Cadena et al., 2023; Hesselbarth et al., 2019). These two metrics indicated the degree of habitat fragmentation.