Conservation Biology

Global conservation agreements emphasize protected area coverage targets, such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Frameworks 30x30 target, yet their effectiveness in safeguarding biodiversity remains uncertain. We measure the intersection between marine protected area (MPAs) coverage and the distribution of sharks and rays. Using global range maps and MPA boundaries within national Exclusive Economic Zones, we calculate the percent of species ranges within MPAs, focusing on no-take areas. We reveal significant shortfalls in species-level protection. Within national waters, no Critically Endangered species has more than 5% of its range in no-take MPAs, and 79% of threatened species have less than 1%. We also find the WDPA contains major gaps in take-status reporting, only one third of countries (34%) report take-status of any MPAs to the WDPA, further limiting estimates of meaningful protection. These results highlight the implementation gap between global coverage targets and biodiversity outcomes, reinforcing the need for species-focused protection.

In an era of severe global biodiversity threats, understanding the link between species traits and their endangerment helps uncover causes of risk and infer threats to understudied species. Most animals have complex life cycles with distinct stages that may face stage-specific threats. Current conservation frameworks rely heavily on adult traits, potentially misjudging extinction risk. Using Chinese anurans as a model, we integrated functional traits from both adult and tadpole stages to examine their association with extinction risk. We found that body size positively correlates with risk in both stages. Microhabitat use related with extinction risk in tadpoles but shows no significant link in adults. Adult relative tympanum diameter and head length also correlate with extinction risk. These results indicate that species vulnerability is shaped by multi-stage traits, with both shared and stage-specific threats. Conservation based solely on adult traits may fail to accurately assess species threats. We call for integrating a whole-life-history perspective into biodiversity assessment and conservation to more effectively address the global biodiversity crisis.

Reliable freshwater access drives terrestrial wildlife movements and habitat use globally. The small, rain-fed seasonal pools critical for dryland wildlife persistence are vulnerable to rising temperatures and unstable precipitation regimes projected under climate change. In southern Africa, which is expected to warm rapidly by 2100, the drying and disappearance of surface water may cause a breakdown in seasonal migrations of large, area-sensitive, and water-dependent wildlife species. Furthermore, the disappearance of ephemeral water may concentrate wildlife around remaining surface water, increasing resource competition and human-wildlife conflict. An accurate understanding of the dynamics and drivers of seasonal surface water will therefore be critical to wildlife and human health as climate change intensifies. Here, we present a framework and empirical analysis of fine-scale surface water mapping in the 520,000km2 Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), the worlds largest terrestrial conservation area. From 2019-2025, we implemented Otsu thresholding on median Automated Water Extraction Index imagery from 10m Sentinel-2 MSI, leveraging high wet season contrast between vegetation and water as a dry season positive mask. We created >35 quasi-monthly KAZA-wide Ephemeral Surface Water (ESW) rasters (mean classification accuracy 87%, compared to 50% accuracy for existing water products), and found wet season precipitation drivers of non-riparian water fill levels did not extend into the dry season. Then, using GPS data from 27 African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana), which typically visit water every 48 hours, we compared elephant water visitation rates based on ESW to existing 30m Global Surface Water (GSW) maps. Models using ESW estimated 99% of elephant data came within a 48-hour window, compared to 42% for GSW, suggesting that ESW is a better proxy for actual wildlife water use in animal movement modeling. As aridification threatens to diminish surface water resources, we must model the drivers of wildlife movements at the scale of wildlife needs. With ESW, we provide fine scale accessible surface water data and a straightforward coding architecture for applications beyond KAZA.

Animal population control is widely used to mitigate conflicts between wildlife and agriculture worldwide. Structured, monitored removals are rare in South America, however, and their consequences for wildlife populations as well as their effectiveness in reducing crop damage are little understood. Using eight years of data from an experimental white-lipped peccary management program in an agricultural mosaic in the Brazilian Cerrado biome, we assess how structured, non-lethal removals affect both peccary demography and second-crop corn damage. Leslie removal models based on 6,619 captured individuals indicated that cumulative removals to approximately 85% of the initial population strongly reduced peccary abundance, with limited demographic compensation despite fluctuations in reproductive output. Corn crop damage, quantified with satellite imagery, declined over time and was correlated with peccary population size. Interannual variation in population growth and juvenile recruitment was poorly explained by climate, fire, or landscape composition. Source-sink dynamics likely play a role in maintaining healthy populations at the regional scale. Together, these results demonstrate that sustained and monitored ungulate removals can reliably reduce population size and agricultural damage, supporting coexistence between wildlife and food crop production in human-dominated tropical landscapes.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly promoted as climate mitigation tools, yet guidance on their placement to maximize resilience against climate stressors like marine heatwaves remains limited. Here, we develop MPA placement guidelines that explicitly consider a mechanistic pathway through which MPAs could enhance kelp forest resilience to heatwaves: protecting fishery-targeted urchin predators to prevent kelp overgrazing. Using a spatially explicit, tri-trophic model of California kelp forests, we evaluate alternative MPA configurations across a hypothetical coastline where half the habitat experiences an increased probability of experiencing heatwaves. We found that effective MPA placement depends on whether MPAs are being newly established or reconfigured within an existing network, and that among-patch connectivity and spillover played vital roles in the relative effectiveness of different MPA configurations. Changes in resilience occurred primarily at the patch scale, with trade-offs between increased within-MPA resilience and decreased resilience in some fished areas, resulting in minimal coastwide population effects. For example, for new MPAs, large single MPAs within heatwave-prone areas maximized within-MPA resilience gains, while multiple small MPAs in heatwave refugia best supported whole-coast resilience. When reconfiguring established networks, expanding existing MPAs in refugia areas was most effective. We also demonstrate the importance of considering MPA recovery timescales: for example, relocating old MPAs to heatwave refugia yielded minimal short-term benefits due to the loss of rebuilt, previously fished, predator biomass. Our findings demonstrate that climate-adaptive marine planning should explicitly consider the spatiotemporal implications of trophic cascades, connectivity, and transient population dynamics to support ecosystem resilience.

Understanding how climate shapes intraspecific genetic turnover is critical for predicting biodiversity responses to global change, yet such analyses remain limited for systems where natural adaptation and human-mediated dispersal jointly structure diversity. Here, we investigate the spatio-temporal dynamics of genetic composition in the western honey bee (Apis mellifera) across Anatolia and Thrace, a major historical refugium harboring five subspecies. Using a dataset of 672 individuals genotyped at 30 microsatellite loci, we characterize population structure and model ancestry compositions as a function of environmental and geographic variables. We integrate Gradient Forests and Generalized Dissimilarity Modelling to identify key climatic drivers of intra-specific turnover and project future changes under multiple CMIP6 climate scenarios. We detect five major ancestral groups with widespread admixture structured by both spatial processes and environmental gradients. While geographic distance explains a substantial proportion of variation, climatic variables account for a large fraction of ancestry turnover. Spatial projections reveal distinct ecological regions corresponding to subspecies distributions, with high turnover zones aligned with major geographic and ecological barriers. Climate projections indicate substantial restructuring of ancestry compositions over the 21st century. Most ancestral groups show declines in persistence and resilience, whereas lineages associated with warmer and drier conditions expand under future scenarios. Regions of high uniqueness and refugia contract, while areas experiencing rapid turnover and novel ancestry compositions increase. Existing Genetic Conservation Areas provide incomplete representation of diversity and are projected to lose effectiveness under future climates. Our results demonstrate that climate change is likely to disrupt spatial genetic structure, promote admixture, and threaten persistence and resilience of honey bee populations. By modeling ancestry composition as a multidimensional proxy for genetic variation, for the first time to our knowledge, this study provides a scalable framework for forecasting intraspecific biodiversity dynamics and informing conservation and management strategies under global change.

Natural history collections underpin our understanding of species distributions, yet some historical records remain embedded in modern avifaunal checklists despite limited documentation and no independent verification. One such case concerns the Dusky Parrot Pionus fuscus in Colombia: although reported from specimens collected by Melbourne A. Carriker Jr. in 1942 in the Serrania de Perija, the species has not been observed in the country for nearly eight decades yet continues to be included in national checklists and conservation assessments. We reassessed the validity of this record by applying a multi-evidence framework integrating historic archival reconstruction, specimen-based morphological comparisons, climatic niche analyses, biogeographic limit assessment and contemporary survey-effort data. Historical documentation and morphological evidence based on high-resolution specimen images and associated curatorial records demonstrate that the Carriker specimens correspond to Pionus chalcopterus, not P. fuscus. Climatic niche analyses reveal minimal environmental overlap between P. chalcopterus and P. fuscus, and place the Perija locality within the climatic niche of P. chalcopterus, while regional biogeography and extensive modern birdwatching coverage provide no support for the occurrence of P. fuscus in Perija. Together, these concordant lines of evidence demonstrate that P. fuscus does not occur in Colombia. Our findings support its removal from national bird lists and conservation assessments and highlight how integrated, multi-evidence reassessments of historical records strengthen ornithological baselines, improve biogeographic inference and ensure that conservation priorities rest on verifiable evidence.

The rising demand for outdoor recreation worldwide may be undermining the conservation objectives of protected areas (PAs). We leveraged a natural experiment, in which two adjacent PAs were closed to the public for different durations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using detections from 39 camera traps in Joffre Lakes and Garibaldi Parks, Canada, from 2020-2022, we examined how recreation influenced mammal habitat use and diversity. Bayesian regression showed weak evidence that, when recreation was higher, detections declined for black bear, mule deer, and marten, while detections of bobcat and hoary marmot shifted closer to trails. Accumulation curves revealed that species richness and diversity were higher in the closed vs. open PA in 2020 (mean differences of -5.04 for richness and -0.33 for Shannon diversity). However, diversity did not decline consistently despite increases in recreation in 2021 and 2022. Notably, several rare species were only detected in the lower-recreation PA, suggesting they may be filtered out of the higher-recreation PA. This emphasizes the need for long-term monitoring to detect delayed and cumulative effects of recreation on mammal communities. Given growing global pressures on biodiversity, we urge PA managers to prioritize adaptive management to assess and balance outdoor recreation with conservation goals.

BackgroundHuman-wildlife conflict, which motivates retaliatory killings, is a major driver of species decline globally. Addressing an open question in human-wildlife conflict, we test whether evolutionary-rooted human attitudes, independent of economic losses, better predict retaliatory responses. MethodsWe examined human attitudes toward spectacled bears (Tremarctos ornatus) and other wild carnivores in a wildlife conflict-zone in southern Ecuador by conducting interviews in rural communities. We measured both established variables - such as education levels, age, and gender - and novel psychometric variables to identify predictors of human-wildlife conflict responses. ResultsPerceptions of animals emerged as the strongest predictor of conflict responses. Communities exhibiting high levels of vengefulness, particularly within an animal-directed Culture of Honor, where individuals, especially men, are expected to respond strongly or violently to perceived threats, were more likely to support lethal interventions. Conversely, individuals with strong environmental education backgrounds demonstrated more positive perceptions of wildlife, highlighting educations potential role in conflict mitigation. ConclusionEvolutionary-derived attitudes, rather than economic factors, primarily drive human responses to wildlife conflict. Effective strategies to reduce violence against wildlife should incorporate human perceptions and culturally rooted values to address the underlying social and psychological drivers of conflict.

Global biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate due to rapid environmental change and increasing human pressures. Ongoing urban expansion fragments natural systems, while urban design increasingly seeks to mitigate these impacts through the integration of blue-green infrastructure. Effective biodiversity monitoring is therefore essential to evaluate ecological conditions within these novel socio-ecological systems. Although urban biodiversity monitoring is challenged by its high landscape heterogeneity, dense human populations provide opportunities for large-scale data collection through public participation in citizen science. Using data from 25 City Nature Challenge (CNC) projects across the United Kingdom (2020-2025), we assessed the effects of the four-day bioblitz on species inventories, participation in biological recording, and spatial patterns of recording effort. CNC events doubled public participation in iNaturalist recording relative to baseline activity, leading to the documentation of numerous previously unrecorded species through increased observer effort and broader use of urban blue-green spaces. These results show that CNC events enhance urban biodiversity datasets by increasing the number of observers and reducing spatial and observer biases, providing a cost-effective tool for enriching urban biodiversity data. In addition to generating ecological data, CNC events could have public health benefits through increased exposure to urban blue-green spaces.

If youve ever complained about a species name thats a mouthful--say, the soldier fly Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides or the myxobacterium Myxococcus llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochensis--youre in very good company. But could the readability of binomial scientific names cause more than complaints? Could it influence how much species are studied and talked about? We examined a random sample of 3,019 species names spanning 29 phyla/divisions. We tested whether name length and reading difficulty are associated with species representation in the scientific literature (measured via literature mentions) and their visibility to the public (measured via Wikipedia pageviews). Both species name traits showed significant negative relationships with literature mentions and Wikipedia reads. Increasing name length from 10 to 30 characters is associated with a 66% decrease in expected mentions and a 65% decrease in Wikipedia reads, while shifting from the most to the least readable name in the dataset corresponds to 53% and 76% decreases. These patterns are consistent with something familiar: the fickleness of human attention, responding to features of the world that are far from rational. While creativity in naming is a cherished part of taxonomy, a touch of orthographic restraint may ultimately benefit both science and the species themselves--especially among understudied uncharismatic taxa.

Community-science platforms such as iNaturalist now contain tens of millions of georeferenced, photographically vouchered biodiversity records, yet extracting reliable quantitative measurements from opportunistic photographs remains methodologically challenging. Here, I evaluate the signal-to-noise ratio of iNaturalist photos for phenotyping Plethodon salamanders across two trait classes: continuous dorsal brightness (a proxy for ecogeographic clines predicted by Glogers rule and the thermal melanism hypothesis) and discrete color morph frequency in P. cinereus. I optimized a color-extraction pipeline using an agent-guided parameter search adapted from the autoresearch framework (Karpathy 2026; Schmidgall et al. 2025), exploring crop fraction, color space, normalization, and quality-control thresholds across 50 bounded micro-experiments. Applying the production HSV pipeline to 103,653 observations of 34 species, I found negligible geographic structure in dorsal brightness (R2 = 0.001), even within P. cinereus alone (n = 71,627). Variance decomposition showed that photographer identity explains 23.3% of brightness variance, geography 5.1%, species 1.6%, and time of day 0.3%, with 69.7% residual. In contrast, a hue-threshold morph classifier recovered a significant geographic signal in red-back frequency (R2 = 0.008, p < 0.001), 7x stronger than the brightness result, though still weaker than the supervised CNN of Hantak et al. (2022; pseudo-R2 {approx} 0.04). These results indicate that citizen-science photographs are poorly suited to continuous quantitative phenotyping under current collection conditions, whereas discrete categorical traits remain recoverable with appropriate classifiers. The autoresearch loop clarified the failure mode: no tested parameter configuration recovered a meaningful brightness signal from a dataset dominated by observer effects.

AimHuman land-use has dramatically altered the amount, quality, and connectivity of habitat for species worldwide. Understanding how these changes affect individual species is essential for predicting the overall consequences of land-use change for biodiversity. LocationThe Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. Forest cover on the island increased from about 18 to 45% from the late 1940s to the early 2000s. MethodsUsing data on geographic distributions and functional traits for 454 tree species, we evaluated how gain of potential habitat was related to species-specific climatic associations and life-history strategies. We estimated species-specific potential habitat (climatically suitable and forested) with species distribution models and data on forest cover. We characterized each species niche breadth (the range of environmental conditions it occupies) and niche position (the environmental conditions it prefers) to compare with the conditions in reforested areas. ResultsSpecies with relatively more potential habitat in 1951 (climatically suitable and forested) also had relatively larger gains in potential habitat from 1951 to 2000. Species that tend to occupy conditions different from those common in reforested areas (i.e., more marginal habitats) gained relatively less potential habitat and species with broad environmental niches gained more potential habitat. Additionally, species with relatively acquisitive functional traits gained more suitable habitat than those with relatively conservative traits. Main conclusionsOur results show that Puerto Ricos reforestation preferentially increased habitat for species that (1) already had suitable habitat in the landscape, (2) tolerate a wide range of climatic conditions, and (3) exhibit fast, acquisitive functional strategies. These findings illustrate how land-use change in heterogeneous tropical landscapes can generate non-uniform habitat gains across species, potentially favoring generalist over specialist species and reshaping community composition.

Small marsupials in the family Dasyuridae are a key component of Australias arid and semi-arid fauna, whose high species richness is proposed to reflect an opportunity-driven adaptive radiation. Despite growing interest in this group from both ecological and evolutionary perspectives, genomic data for most species is non-existent, or limited to a few marker loci. Here, we generated a chromosome-level reference genome and a de novo mitochondrial genome for the desert-dwelling Wongai ningaui (Ningaui ridei). The nuclear genome assembly is highly contiguous, with a scaffold N50 of 594.484 MB and high BUSCO gene recovery (93.84%). Additionally, we produced a draft assembly for the related, semi-arid slender-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis murina). We then used these assemblies to explore the demographic histories of these species. We find evidence for contrasting patterns of population growth during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, corresponding with differences in local climate, potentially consistent with differences in optimal habitat. The new genomic resources and demographic findings presented here provide a foundation for future studies on adaptive specialisation in this group of Australian marsupials. Significance StatementDasyurid marsupials are the primary carnivorous and insectivorous mammals in Australia. This diverse family includes species such as the endangered Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) and quolls (Genus Dasyurus), as well as an emerging laboratory model species, the fat-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata). Despite the species richness within dasyurids, most species remain under-studied. This is particularly true of arid and semi-arid zone species, who are often small in size, live in remote habitats and are cryptic by nature. By creating genome assemblies for two dasyurid species, this study provides resources to support a variety of phylogenetic, population genetic and evolutionary developmental lines of research. Importantly, the studys finding that arid and semi-arid dasyurids show distinct trajectories of demographic change in response to historical climatic shifts may point to local adaptations with implications for the resilience of these species to ongoing and future climate change.

Community science data are increasingly recognized as important resources for biodiversity research, in part because of the spatial and temporal resolution that they afford. While these data are useful for applications such as describing occurrence patterns, tracking movement of migratory animals, and recording phenological events, they can also be probed for "second-order" purposes, such as documenting species interactions. Here, I present a dataset of more than 35,000 annotated interactions between monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) larvae and their associated host plants from the community science platform iNaturalist. I document more than 70 unique species of milkweed hosts (Apocynaceae: Asclepiadoideae) used by monarch larvae, including a number of previously undocumented interactions. Monarchs show strong seasonal turnover in the species of host plants used across the migratory cycle, highlighting the importance of early season hosts like Asclepias viridis and A. asperula in eastern North America and A. californica and A. cordifolia in the west. I also demonstrate that non-native horticultural milkweed species have increased the spatial extent of monarch breeding during winter (November - February) by more than 60%, a pattern previously suggested from observational data but not formally quantified until now. To my knowledge, this represents the largest analysis to date of species interactions using unstructured community science data and highlights the value of platforms like iNaturalist for conducting fundamental research in ecology and conservation.

Global pollinator declines threaten the health of ecosystems and food systems, underscoring the urgency of conservation actions such as habitat restoration. However, data gaps on plant use among pollinators continue to limit reliable design of restoration plant mixes. To address this, we present NECTAR (Network-Enhanced Conservation Tool for Analysis and Recommendation), a new modular framework that integrates multiple data modalities-including species distributions, phenometrics, and phylogenetic data-to infer flower visitation and host plant interactions from spatial, temporal, and phylogenetic overlap, generating spatially explicit plant-insect interaction networks that guide planting recommendations for pollinator habitat restoration. We demonstrate the utility of NECTAR by generating a large plant-insect metaweb across California, comprising 1,247,081 spatially explicit interactions for 5,131 pollinator species and 5,178 native plant species. Predicted networks recovered significantly more interactions than null models, demonstrating that integrating multiple ecological constraints improves interaction prediction. In realistic restoration simulations, NECTARs data-driven plant mix recommendations support up to 2.8 times more pollinator species compared to existing resources and random selection of plants. This optimization facilitates the inclusion of multiple goals and constraints, and provides complementary decision-making information to existing resources. NECTAR offers a scalable, evidence-based framework for translating increasingly available global biodiversity data into locally actionable restoration guidance, with broad potential to improve pollinator habitat restoration worldwide.

BackgroundHuman-Wildlife Conflict is emerging as one of the most critical conservation and socio-economic challenges in the Ecuadorian Andes, where both rural livelihoods and native fauna are under increasing pressure. Small-scale livestock producers in the region depend almost entirely on a limited number of cattle, meaning that the loss of even a single animal can lead to severe economic hardship. In response, antagonistic actions against wildlife are frequent, further threatening vulnerable species. At the same time, the recent proliferation of feral dogs adds a new dimension to conflict, posing risks to both livestock and native fauna. Despite the growing severity of this conflict, little is known of its drivers, spatial patterns, and socio-ecological consequences. This study seeks to fill that gap by generating insights to inform targeted conservation strategies for community-based mitigation of conflict with spectacled bears and feral dogs. MethodsTo assess the drivers and dynamics of HWC in southern Ecuador, we conducted structured interviews with livestock owners, quantifying the frequency and intensity of conflicts across multiple species and evaluating whether farm composition and management practices predict conflict patterns. ResultsOur results reveal that large carnivores cause significantly higher economic losses than smaller predators; furthermore, feral dogs have emerged as the primary source of financial damage over the past five years. Farms with a greater proportion of forest edge were associated with a higher probability of severe conflict, particularly with large carnivores. ConclusionsThese findings underscore the urgent need for proactive strategies to promote coexistence. Identifying predictive variables of conflict risk is crucial for vulnerability assessments and the design of effective mitigation policies. Controlling feral dog populations is likely to be a critical step in safeguarding both rural human livelihoods and native biodiversity in the Andean landscape.

Mesic resources, the late-season herbaceous vegetation found in riparian areas and wet meadows, provide disproportionately important forage and habitat across western U.S. rangelands, yet their response to climatic variability and anthropogenic influences remains poorly understood. Using a 40-year Landsat time series (1984-2024), we quantified trends in late-season productivity (NDVI) across 4.5 million hectares of the sagebrush biome and applied random forest models to distinguish between temporal and spatial predictors of mesic resource productivity. We identified a fundamental shift in how mesic resources respond to drought: from 1984 to 2004, mesic productivity was strongly correlated with drought severity (Palmer Drought Severity Index, R{superscript 2} = 0.92), but this relationship weakened substantially in the next two decades (2005-2024; R{superscript 2} = 0.28), during which time productivity increased despite persistent aridity. Temporal modeling identified rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations as the strongest predictor of this shift, consistent with enhanced plant water-use efficiency under CO2 fertilization. Spatially, large agricultural valley floodplains act as anthropogenic refugia, sustaining productive mesic resources through flood irrigation and subsequent groundwater recharge into late summer. These findings suggest that human water management and physiological shifts in vegetation are currently buffering mesic systems against meteorological drought throughout U.S. rangelands. However, this apparent buffering is spatially heterogeneous and may mask vulnerability to groundwater depletion, shifts in precipitation regimes, and woody encroachment. Sustaining these vital ecosystems will require conservation approaches that go beyond climate monitoring to include balanced management considering both agricultural and ecological water needs and constraints.

Reliable models of species niches and distributions depend on accurately matching occurrences to environments via spatial and temporal coordinates. For fossil occurrences, time-averaging and age uncertainty can create mismatches between fossils and their associated environments, distorting inferred niches and distributions. Using a virtual ecology approach, we assessed how temporal uncertainty ({+/-}200 years to the full late Quaternary) influences niche and distribution estimates for four virtual species centered on three periods: Holocene (6,000 y.b.p), deglacial (13,500 y.b.p.), and Last Glacial Maximum (18,000 k.y.b.p.). We compared uncertain estimates, derived by matching occurrences with environmental layers drawn from different times within each uncertainty window, against true niches and distributions. We found that during environmentally stable intervals, niches and distributions were robust to temporal uncertainty until it reached {+/-}2500 years. Higher environmental variability reduced accuracy, with the greatest mismatch occurring during the deglacial. These results demonstrate both the promise and limitations of paleodistribution reconstruction.

The yellownose skate (Dipturus chilensis) is an endangered skate with a narrow distribution in the southeastern Pacific, facing intense fishing pressure and potential climate threats. Using a species distribution model, we projected the current and future distribution of D. chilensis under contrasting climate change scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5) for mid-century (2050) and end-of-century (2100). Our models, which demonstrated robust predictive performance significantly better than random expectations, identified maximum temperature and minimum oxygen as the primary environmental drivers of habitat suitability. Projections revealed a consistent poleward range shift towards the Channels and Fjords of Southern Chile ecoregion across all scenarios. While localized habitat loss was projected in Central Chile and Araucanian ecoregions, particularly under high emissions (SSP5-8.5), these losses were outweighed by southern expansions, leading to a net increase in total suitable habitat by 2100. These findings underscore the critical need for climate-adaptive management strategies, including the protection of emerging southern refugia and dynamic fisheries regulations, to ensure the long-term persistence of D. chilensis.