Analysis of distribution of the Turkestan rock agama, Paralaudakia lehmanni (Nikolsky, 1896): using of Maxent modeling

Abstract

Methods of modeling and predicting the potential ranges to determine the limiting factors and conservation priorities are increasingly important in modern herpetological studies. In present paper we provide an analysis and forecast of the potential distribution of the Central Asian rock agamid species, – Turkestan rock agama (Paralaudakia lehmanni), and analyze the characteristics of its habitat preference using Maxent (www.cs.princeton.edu/~schapire/maxent/). We used the data from 19 bioclimatic variables (Bio 1–19) obtained from the database WorldClim (http://www.worldclim.org/current/), and the geographical coordinates of 70 localities from the whole distribution range, explored at different times. This method allows identifying the factors that have a major impact on the distribution of living organisms. The constructed model of distribution of P. lehmanni revealed enough good performance (AUC = 0.990 at variance 0.004) and predicted that the most suitable Turkestan rock agama habitats are located in the eastern Uzbekistan, western and central Tajikistan, as well as in adjacent areas of the western Kyrgyzstan and northern Afghanistan.