Climate change triggering shifts in venomous snakes hotspots and snakebite risk in India

Amidst several global environmental challenges, climate change severely threatens biodiversity, leading to shifts in species distributions, and, in extreme cases, local or global extinctions. Here, we modeled the current and future distributions of biodiversity hotspots for terrestrial venomous snake species across India and evaluated shifts under two climate change scenarios that represent future greenhouse gas concentrations for the years 2050 and 2070. Additionally, to assess potential changes in human-snake conflict zones, we emphasized the four major species of medical importance (hereafter "big four"): Bungarus caeruleus, Naja naja, Daboia russelii, and Echis carinatus. We compiled 4966 occurrence records of 30 species obtained from citizen science platforms, open-access repositories, social media groups, and scientific literature, which were further thinned to 2931 unique locations. We developed species distribution models using MaxEnt by integrating species-specific sets of least-correlated bioclimatic variables. Species-specific distribution maps were overlaid to identify regional hotspots and their predicted spatial shifts. Our projections indicated that around ~ 3% of India's land area could undergo hotspot turnover by 2070 (in worst-case scenario), including substantial contractions in the Western Ghats and northeast India, and expansions in central India. The consensus habitat suitability for the big four showed a significant positive effect on state-wide snakebite records (β = 1.15 ± 0.4, p < 0.01). Future scenarios suggest increasing snakebite risk in parts of northern India, including Himalaya and northeast India, and southern elevated ranges, such as the Western Ghats. Our study provides the first nationwide assessment of climate-driven distributional shifts in venomous snakes in India, highlighting the need to integrate climate-driven conservation planning with adaptive public health strategies to minimize biodiversity loss and human-snake conflict under future climate change scenarios.