Modeling Stygofauna Resilience to the Impact of the Climate Change in the Karstic Groundwaters of South Italy

We predicted the global warming effects on the stygofauna of Murgia–Salento karstic groundwaters in Italy for 2050, which contribute to a biodiversity loss assessment in the climate change context. For quantitative impact estimations, we defined a local resilience score (LRS) for sampled species between 2018 and 2021. A resilience model equation of the stygobiont species conservation was obtained from a surface best-fit of the assigned LRS and the corresponding values of independent variables describing the environmental quality of monitored habitats and LRS. The principal components of the correlation between the monitored variables and LRS were obtained via factor analysis. Three-dimensional surface maps of stygofauna species resilience (SSR) were constructed to visualize and quantitatively compare the biodiversity loss of species assemblages owing to environmental and habitat quality modifications. The proposed SSR model was applied to the sampled stygofauna, and the decrease in local species resilience for 2050 was predicted. Independent variable factors were updated for 2050 to consider increases of up to 2 °C and 0.04 mS/cm in groundwater temperature and electric conductance observed for 2021. The SSR model results predicted a high impact on the resilience of Parastenocaris cf. orcina (80%), newly retrieved Crustacea Copepod Cyclopidae gen 1 sp 1, and three other stygobites (~50%). The resilience of Metacyclops stammeri had minor impacts.