Over 8,000 species of Lamiaceae plants are widely distributed globally and often endemic to specific regions, with a significant proportion of monotypic and oligotypic genera among the 226 genera (wcvp). Elsholtzia eriostachya, Eriophyton wallichii,Marmoritis complanata and Phlomoides rotata are four Lamiaceae herbs endemic to the Third Pole. They are concentrated in the HHM’s alpine regions above 4,000 meters a.s.l. and have historically been collected as traditional medicinal herbs. Currently, these species are under threat from climate change and human activities. However, their medicinal properties have been widely studied, but few studies have addressed how their distribution changes in response to future climate warming, which is the focus of this study.
In order to evaluate the importance of environmental variables in shaping species distributions and to predict changes in species distributions in response to future climate changes, Ecological Niche Modelling (ENM) has been widely used and become a standard tool for ecologists and conservation biologists (Peterson & Vieglais, 2001).