Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity 11 (2018) 203e205
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Original Article
Habitat suitability prediction for Salamandra infraimmaculata (Caudata: Amphibia) in western Iran based on species distribution modeling Nabi Ahsani a, Mohammad Kaboli b, *, Eskandar Rastegar-Pouyani c, Mahmood Karami a, Barzan Bahrami Kamangar d a
Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Hakim Sabzevari University, Sabzevar, Iran d Department of Fisheries, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran b c
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 21 August 2017 Received in revised form 22 February 2018 Accepted 27 February 2018 Available online 12 March 2018
Salamandra infraimmaculata is a member of family Salamandridae that is distributed in Iran, Turkey, and Lebanon. We surveyed habitat suitability predictions for the species in Kurdistan province, Western Iran. Distribution prediction showed excellent performance (area under the curve ¼ 0.962), with temperature seasonality (47.8%) and precipitation of coldest quarter (38.4%) being two main bioclimatic variables predicting species presence. Temperature and precipitation are two dependent variables on which vegetation and habitat type depend. Slopes of the western Zagros Mountains have moist and temperate oak forests that contain many springs. The presence of both oak forests and water resources may allow the establishment of populations of fire salamanders in the region. As the forests are decreasing because of human activities, the amount of suitable habitats for this species is also decreasing. It is necessary to develop and implement conservation programs to protect the oak forests on the western slopes of the Zagros. Ó 2018 National Science Museum of Korea (NSMK) and Korea National Arboretum (KNA), Publishing Services by Elsevier. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords: Bioclimate variable Habitat suitability Maximum entropy Salamandra infraimmaculata Zagros Mountain
Introduction The fire salamander, Salamandra infraimmaculata, a member of the family Salamandridae is distributed in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and Palestine (Blank et al 2013). The species is found in Western Iran near springs and under tree leaves (Leviton et al 1992). The Zagros Mountains in Western Iran creates a rich region for endemic reptiles and amphibians (Fathnia et al 2010). Different valleys and mountains in the region have unique climate conditions, but the climate in general has moderate temperature and moisture during spring and summer (Zaitchik et al 2007). Many studies have been conducted on reptiles and amphibians in Iran, but there are few studies that address species distribution modeling of amphibians. Most of the recent ecological niche models were performed on reptiles (Hosseinian Yousefkhani et al
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ98 2632223044. E-mail address:
[email protected] (M. Kaboli). Peer review under responsibility of National Science Museum of Korea (NSMK) and Korea National Arboretum (KNA).
2013; Fattahi et al 2014), except one on the genus Hyla in Iran (Hosseinian Yousefkhani et al 2016). Climate is the most important factor for the species presence in its natural habitats. When the climate variables change so that they are not tolerable for species, then the species cannot survive in the region and must migrate into new suitable region or be eliminated from the habitat (Pearson and Dawson 2003). An important part of conserving vulnerable species is to predict new suitable areas for them to inhabit based on ecological niche modeling. Current world conditions, showing annual temperature increases and effects of global warming, will contribute to hot and dry climates that can be dangerous to amphibians (Araújo et al 2006). As a result, suitable areas for amphibian presence may be restricted to smaller habitats and then consequently the population size of the species decreases in subsequent years. While Ecological Niche Models have been presented as good tools for conservation and management of species (Whittaker et al 2005; Williams et al 2009), particularly those that are cryptic, rare, and poorly documented (Santos et al 2006) as S. infraimmaculata, we make prediction about the potential distribution and highlight most important factors in shaping distribution and habitat suitability of the species.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japb.2018.02.007 pISSN2287-884X eISSN2287-9544/Ó 2018 National Science Museum of Korea (NSMK) and Korea National Arboretum (KNA), Publishing Services by Elsevier. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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Figure 1. Map of surveyed area: A, map of Iran with the study area in Western Iran that highlighted in gray; B, the habitat suitability map shows the regions predicted to be suitable for S. infraimmaculata in Kurdistan province. Colors refer to the degree of suitability, ranging from high (red) to low (green) as shown in the legend.
Materials and methods In this study, 25 occurrence records were obtained directly through fieldwork in Kurdistan province, Western Iran for S. infraimmaculata presence. In addition to these occurrence records, we used 19 bioclimate variables that were downloaded in 30 arc second resolution (Hijmans et al 2005). The layers were cropped using ArcGIS 10.3 (ESRI group) for Western Iran only to reduce the file size and enhance the analysis speed. Occurrence records were inserted into Open Modeller 1.7.0 (Muñoz et al 2011) in combination with climate variables to get values for each grid cell that corresponds to the records. Then the relevant values were analyzed in SPSS 16.0 to obtain the binary correlation (Pearson coefficient), after which we eliminated the variables having correlations greater than 0.70 (Elith et al 2006). We used the maximum entropy algorithm to predict the potential distribution of S. infraimmaculata in Western Iran (Phillips et al 2006; Elith et al 2011). Based on this algorithm, the probability of presence in a given cell on the basis of environmental layers is calculated and compared with other cell probabilities in the region. Then, software predicts suitable regions (Elith et al 2011). Four bioclimate variables were selected based on the correlation analysis and then used to assess the potential predicted areas. The variables are as follows: mean diurnal range (BIO2), isothermality (BIO3), temperature seasonality (BIO4), and precipitation of coldest quarter (BIO19). These variables directly relate to habitat features such as temperature and precipitation that are important to the species. The number of replicates was set at 10 with default maximum entropy settings. We considered 10% of the
data as test data and the remaining 90% as training data (NoguésBravo 2009). Model accuracy was measured using area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operator plot for the test and training data separately. The AUC is between 0.5 and 1. If the value is 0.5, then it means that the model accuracy is not better than random chance. AUC > 0.7 indicates useful performance, AUC > 0.8 indicates good performance, and AUC > 0.9 indicates the excellent performance for the model (Manel et al 2001). The percentage contribution of each involved variable is presented. Results All 25 records of presence of S. infraimmaculata were provided from our direct fieldwork in Kurdistan province, Western Iran. The distribution of the species in western areas of the province was covered using direct fieldwork. However, the model indicates that all parts of the province have good ecological conditions for species presence and that some areas (such as Baneh, Marivan, and parts of the Saghez) show the highest suitability (near 1) (Figure 1). The model was run in ten replicates, and the result showed an excellent AUC (AUC ¼ 0.962 0.022). Temperature seasonality with 47.8% is the most important variable predicting species presence, and other variables contributed as follows: BIO19, 38.4%; BIO2, 9%; and BIO3, 4.8%. Discussion The results of this study indicated that the western parts of the Kurdistan province are more suitable for species presence than other regions of the province (Figure 1). So far, there are few studies
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that have examined amphibians based on species distribution modeling (but see Hosseinian Yousefkhani et al 2016). Hosseinian Yousefkhani et al (2016) examined bioclimatic conditions for evaluating the distributions of three tree frog species (genus Hyla) and found that their distribution was restricted by extreme conditions such as lack of moisture and high temperature. Similarly, this study found that the distribution of S. infraimmaculata was restricted by the hot and dry climate conditions in west of Iraq. Our predicted model obtained with the highest value of AUC (0.962) indicated to be excellent predictive model completely compatible with the suitable grid cells (Manel et al 2001). Both Kermanshah and Azerbaijan provinces in the south and north of Kurdistan have extreme conditions and are not suitable for the fire salamander presence. Temperature and precipitation are two main factors affecting the distribution of Zagros flora (Noroozi et al 2008) which is important to the distribution of the fauna because animals depend on their habitat vegetation and features (Tews et al 2004). Currently, habitat loss is worsening, and this means that the potential of a habitat to provide food for different species can be decreased (Benton et al 2003). Decreases in the size and number of forest areas in Kurdistan is a major problem faced by amphibians because these animals are more sensitive than others to changes in habitat moisture and temperature (Pounds et al 2006). Forest fires, cutting of trees for fuel, agricultural activities, etc. can cause habitat loss in Kurdistan, and then these conditions can reduce the population size of fire salamanders limiting their distribution to periphery of springs. Our responsibility to protect animals from habitat disruption motivated us to conduct this study and send the report to Iran Department of Environment for future conservation programs on this interesting species. Conflicts of interest The authors declare that there is no conflicts of interest. Acknowledgments The authors thank Ann Paterson who edited an early draft of manuscript and added valuable comments to improve the style of the paragraphs. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data related to this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japb.2018.02.007.
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