Abstract
The crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata) underwent a rapid and widespread range expansion in Italy. Nowadays the species is moving towards the northernmost regions of the country and its occurrence is increasing in the highly anthropized Po Plain. Our objectives were to evaluate the suitability of the Po Plain for the species, as well as to identify dispersal corridors connecting the northern Apennines occurrence areas and the Prealps. We modelled the species home-range scale habitat suitability based on an ensemble modelling approach. Additionally, a habitat suitability prediction carried out at a finer scale was used to parametrize the landscape resistance, based on which we modelled the potential dispersal corridors for the species using a factorial least-cost path approach. The ensemble prediction estimated a potential occurrence of the crested porcupine in 27.4% of the study area. The species occurrence probability was mainly driven by the distribution of extensive cultivations, woodlands and shrublands, and water courses and by the annual mean temperature. Conversely, the movements of the species resulted mainly sustained by woodlands and shrublands and highly hindered by simple arable lands and rice paddies. The connectivity prediction showed that three main dispersal routes are likely to connect crested porcupine occurrence areas in the northern Apennines to currently unoccupied but highly suitable areas in the Prealps. The study allowed us to identify the areas in the Prealps with the highest probability to be colonized by the crested porcupine in the near future and provided important insights for the conservation of a strictly protected species in a human-dominated landscape.
Highlights
The crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata) is a large rodent native of North Africa which inhabits the Italian peninsula possibly since the early medieval times (Bertolino et al 2015; Trucchi et al 2016)
We focused on habitat suitability and ecological connectivity for the crested porcupine of the highly anthropized Po Plain, a key area for the species expansion towards the northernmost regions of Italy
We considered as presence and pseudo-absence locations the same locations considered in the habitat suitability ensemble model developed at the home-range scale, while we considered as covariates the land-cover variables measured within a circular buffer of 250 m designed around each presence and pseudoabsence location
Summary
The crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata) is a large rodent (up to 12–15 kg; Mori and Lovari 2014) native of North Africa which inhabits the Italian peninsula possibly since the early medieval times (Bertolino et al 2015; Trucchi et al 2016). The Po Plain is characterized by the presence of scattered natural (e.g., riparian vegetation, broad-leaved woodlands, and shrublands) and semi-natural (e.g., hedgerows and arboreal cultivations) vegetated patches, which can represent a sub-optimal habitat supporting the occurrence of many forest-dwelling mammal species (Balestrieri et al 2015, 2016; Chiatante et al 2017; Dondina et al 2019) These landscape features can mitigate the effects of fragmentation by increasing connectivity and supporting long-range dispersal movements of individuals, as observed for many mammal species both in other geographic contexts [e.g., carnivores (Hilty and Merenlender 2004; Šálek et al 2009; Virgós 2001) and rodents (Bani et al 2018; Silva and Prince 2008)] and in the Po Plain [e.g., the hazel dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius (Dondina et al 2018a); the European badger Meles meles and the roe deer Capreolus capreolus (Dondina et al 2019); the Italian wolf Canis lupus italicus (Dondina et al 2020)]. The possibility of crossing the Po Plain by the crested porcupine would have the important consequence of leading the species towards the Prealps, an area potentially suitable for colonization (Mori et al 2021), where occurrences start to be detected
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