Abstract
It remains a challenge to identify the geographical patterns and underlying environmental associations of species with unique ecological niches and distinct behaviors. This in turn hinders our understanding of the ecology as well as effective conservation management of threatened species. The white-eared night heron (Gorsachius magnificus) is a non-migratory nocturnal bird species that has a patchy distribution in the mountainous forests of East Asia. It is currently categorized as “Endangered” on the IUCN Red List, primarily due to its restricted range and fragmented habitat. To improve our knowledge of the biogeography and conservation of this species, we modeled the geographical pattern of its suitable habitat and evaluated the potential impacts of climate change using ecological niche modeling with a maximum entropy approach implemented in Maxent. Our results indicated that the amount of suitable habitat in all of East Asia was about 130 000 km2, which can be spatially subdivided into several mountain ranges in southern and southwestern China and northern Vietnam. The extent of suitable habitat range may shrink by more than 35% under a predicted changing climate when assuming the most pessimistic condition of dispersal, while some more suitable habitat would be available if the heron could disperse unrestrainedly. The significant future changes in habitat suitability suggested for Gorsachius magnificus urge caution in any downgrading of Red List status that may be considered. Our results also discern potentially suitable areas for future survey efforts on new populations. Overall, this study demonstrates that ecological niche modeling offers an important tool for evaluating the habitat suitability and potential impacts of climate change on an enigmatic and endangered species based on limited presence data.
Highlights
The application of biogeography principles, theories, and analyses in conservation biology, has contributed substantially to the conservation of global biodiversity [1,2]
Our study shows that suitable habitat for the WENH is scattered in the mountainous areas of southern and southwestern China and northern Vietnam
The current presence records of WENH largely fall in this range, which is much congruent with the range defined by BirdLife International [35,46,58]
Summary
The application of biogeography principles, theories, and analyses in conservation biology, has contributed substantially to the conservation of global biodiversity [1,2]. One of the preliminary tasks of conservation biogeography is to explore the geographic patterns of species to inform conservation and management actions [2]. Such efforts can significantly improve our knowledge of the evolutionary history and conservation status of species of concern, allowing effective conservation management [3]. Ecological niche modeling (ENM) is widely used to address issues in biogeography, global change ecology, and conservation biology [4,5,6]. Improving the efficiency of the ENMs, i.e. identifying area with the highest conservation value, establishment of protected areas, implementation of suitable conservation measures and determining the potential impacts of predicted future climate change on species’ range shift, is a critical point for the conservation biology [7,8,9,10]
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