Abstract
Vultures are ecologically important primarily because of their scavenging role in cleaning carcasses of the environment. Because of anthropogenic impacts, the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) has suffered catastrophic declines in parts of its range and, thus, information about its global distribution and factors influencing its occurrence within this range are essential for its conservation. To this end, we estimated the global distribution of Egyptian vulture and variables related to this distribution. We used occurrence points (n = 4740) from online data sources and literature, environmental variables related to these sites and Maximum Entropy software to model the distribution of this species and its relationship to environmental variables during the entire year, breeding and overwintering. Out of ~ 49 million km2 study area, the Egyptian vulture had a predicted range of 6,599,508 km2 distributed across three continents: Africa, Asia and Europe. The densest distribution was in Southern Europe, India and Northern Africa and a sparser distribution was around Mid and Western Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan. Climate was related to the vulture’s most probable range: in particular medium temperature seasonality and low precipitation during the coldest yearly quarter were important variables regardless of the season of observations examined. Conservation of identified habitats and mitigation of anthropogenic impacts to conserve these vultures are recommended for immediate and long-term conservation of the Egyptian vulture globally.
Highlights
The Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) is a trans-continental migratory bird native to Africa, Asia and Europe[1,2]
Among these four model scenarios, the model scenario containing all variables of bio-climatic, topographic, vegetation related and anthropogenic data obtained the highest True Skill Statistics (TSS) and AUC, and demonstrated significant improvement in both AUC and TSS compared to other model formulations (Table 2)
The strong relationship between livestock density and vulture occurrence identified in our model and local studies show the importance of this factor for managing the recovery of regional populations
Summary
The Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) is a trans-continental migratory bird native to Africa, Asia and Europe[1,2]. In Ethiopia, this species most often roosts in grasslands and open savanna at low e levations[4] These regional differences in the factors related to Egyptian vulture distribution clearly suggest that this species is adaptable to local conditions, and that taking a restricted view of their habitat associations is likely to severely underestimate their potential distribution. The distribution, habitat suitability and roosting preferences of the Egyptian vulture have only been examined at local s cales[10,11,12] Because these studies show significant regional variation, it is clear that results from one area (e.g. southern Europe) are not necessarily applicable to another (e.g. Nepal or Ethiopia), and may limit expectations of where this species can successfully occupy within its range. For this we bring together all known observations of the Egyptian vulture during the past 20 years and use Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) modelling to examine these questions
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