Predicting habitat suitability of critically endangered Nepenthes sumatrana

Abstract

Nepenthes sumatrana is a tropical pitcher plant endemic to Sumatra. It has been categorised as critically endangered based on the IUCN Red List. It often occupies in lowland tropical forest of Sumatra. Its habitat has been threatened by land use conversion in the recent decade. Due to the high threats in the wild, the conservation efforts are necessarily required. It is not possible to assess all locations that are suitable for this species. In terms of addressing that issue, Species Distribution Modelling is considered as an alternative way to identify the regions that have the similar environmental conditions to where the species is known to occur. The occurrence records were derived from Global Biodiversity Information Facility and reliable scientific papers. Topography, soil, climate and land cover were used as predictors of the model. MaxEnt algorithm was used to predict the habitat suitability. MaxEnt produces a predictive model with the AUC value of 0.833 indicating that the model has a good performance. The suitable habitats are predicted in several different locations in Sumatra. The information about predicted suitability habitat would be useful to prioritize the protected areas of this species. Furthermore, our findings would be valuable for the discovery of unknown subpopulation.