Abstract
The cheetah is currently recognized by IUCN as a threatened species. Kenya is one of country with significant cheetah population in the world though it fundamental niche is not well known. Wildlife can live in an area only if basic resources such as food, water, and cover are present and if the species is adapted in ways that allow them to cope with the climatic extremes, selection involves several levels of discrimination and spatial scales and a number of potentially interacting factors. This study was to model cheetah fundamental niche using suitable environmental predictors and evaluates suitability of current protected area coverage in its conservation. Two types of model input data used were cheetah occurrence locations and a suite of environmental variables thought to have a direct physiological role in limiting the ability of the species to survive. The species occurrence records and environmental variables were entered into a MaxEnt model which uses maximum entropy algorithm to identify environmental conditions that are associated with species occurrence. Ideal fundamental niche for cheetah were found to be localities within an elevation range of 1600-2100 meters above sea level, receiving mean annual precipitation of 800 mm, with the warmest quarter of the year receiving 250 mm, the wettest month receiving 120 mm, precipitation of coldest quarter 10 mm and temperature seasonality ranges of 150°. Cheetah fundamental niche run across protected areas and for effective conservation, Results could be used to direct conservation effort go beyond parks and reserves by encouraging community conservancies and development of ecological corridors. Protected area planning could benefit too from these results.
Highlights
The fundamental niche of a species is the set of environmental conditions within which a species can survive and persist
The occurrence points and environmental variables were entered into maximum entropy algorithm that aims to identify environmental conditions that are associated with species occurrence using MaxEnt software Version 3.3.3e, (Phillips et al 2005)
Suitable areas for cheetah conservation were established by means of predictive habitat modeling using MaxEnt
Summary
The fundamental niche of a species is the set of environmental conditions within which a species can survive and persist. The fundamental niche may be thought of as an ‘n-dimensional hyper-volume’, every point in which corresponds to a state of the environment that would permit the species to exist indefinitely (Hutchinson, 1957). The fundamental niche describes conditions suitable for survival of the species, and is of great importance for conservation. It is referred to as potential or physiological niche, which denotes the full range of conditions under which the species does best potentially could be found. It can be used to estimate the species’ ecological niche, for example by removing areas where the species is known to be absent because of conspecifics (Butler 1980), inter-specific competitors (Werner and Hall 1979), predators (Werner et al 1983), human settlement or any other habitat destruction. A species’ realized distribution may exhibit some spatial correlation, the potential distribution does not, so considering spatial correlation is not necessarily desirable during species distribution modeling
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