Abstract
Understanding the distribution and the extent of suitable habitats is crucial for wildlife conservation and management. Knowledge is limited regarding the natural habitats of the Chinese monal (Lophophorus lhuysii), which is a vulnerable Galliform species endemic to the high-montane areas of southwest China and a good candidate for being an umbrella species in the Qionglai Mountains. Using ecological niche modeling, we predicted current potential suitable habitats for the Chinese monal in the Qionglai Mountains with 64 presence points collected between 2005 and 2015. Suitable habitats of the Chinese monal were associated with about 31 mm precipitation of the driest quarter, about 15 °C of maximum temperature of the warmest month, and far from the nearest human residential locations (>5,000 m). The predicted suitable habitats of the Chinese monal covered an area of 2,490 km2, approximately 9.48% of the Qionglai Mountains, and was highly fragmented. 54.78% of the suitable habitats were under the protection of existing nature reserves and two conservation gaps were found. Based on these results, we provide four suggestions for the conservation management of the Chinese monal: (1) ad hoc surveys targeting potential suitable habitats to determine species occurrence, (2) more ecological studies regarding its dispersal capacity, (3) establishment of more corridors and green bridges across roads for facilitating species movement or dispersal, and (4) minimization of local disturbances.
Highlights
Understanding the distribution of suitable habitats and its influencing factors are crucial for wildlife conservation and management (Austin, 2002)
How to cite this article Wang et al (2017), Predicting suitable habitat of the Chinese monal (Lophophorus lhuysii) using ecological niche modeling in the Qionglai Mountains, China
Optimized variable selection showed that the model with the lowest AICc was built with: maximum temperature of the warmest month, precipitation of the driest quarter, annual maximum of enhanced vegetation index (EVI), base level values of EVI, slope, and distances to residential locations (d_resident) and to roads (d_road) (Tables S3 and S4)
Summary
Understanding the distribution of suitable habitats and its influencing factors are crucial for wildlife conservation and management (Austin, 2002). MaxEnt, a presence-only modeling approach based on the maximum entropy principle (Phillips, Anderson & Schapire, 2006), outperforms other models in prediction accuracy (Elith et al, 2006; Phillips, Anderson & Schapire, 2006), transferability (Tuanmu et al, 2011), and performance with small sample sizes (Pearson et al, 2007; Costa et al, 2010) It offers great potential for addressing endangered and poorly known bird species with scarce occurrence data (e.g., Botero-Delgadillo, Páez & Bayly, 2012; Marcondes et al, 2014; Tobón-Sampedro & Rojas-Soto, 2015). The Chinese monal (Lophophorus lhuysii) is the largest Galliform species (with a mean length of 76 cm and a mean weight of 3.18 kg) distributed in high-montane regions, mainly inhabiting subalpine scrubs, as well as subalpine and alpine meadows at an elevation of 3,000–4,900 m (MacKinnon, Phillipps & He, 2000; Madge, McGowan & Kirwan, 2002) This species is endemic to southwest China, and is found primarily in southeast Gansu, southeast Qinghai, western Sichuan, and northwest Yunnan (Lei & Lu, 2006; Lu, 2015). It is necessary to establish effective conservation programs targeting the Chinese monal
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