Integrating Current Range-Wide Occurrence Data with Species Distribution Models to Map the Potential Distribution of Baird’s Tapir
- 1. Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin, USA & Global Wildlife Conservation, USA
- 2. Instituto de Investigaciones sobre los Recursos Naturales (INIRENA), Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, Mexico
- 3. IUCN/SSC Tapir Specialist Group & Centro de Estudios Conservacionistas, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas y Farmacia, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala.
- 4. Department of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA
- 5. Global Wildlife Conservation, USA & Panthera
- 6. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, University of Toronto, Canada.
- 7. El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Mexico & Yaguara-Panama, Panama
- 8. Departamento Central de Investigación, Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí, Ecuador
- 9. Fundación Panthera, Honduras
- 10. The Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Centre, Belize
- 11. Fundación Defensores de la Naturaleza
Description
Identifying species distributions is fundamental to understanding their ecology and guiding conservation and management strategies. We compiled 756 unique range-wide Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii) detections via camera trapping of track/sign surveys in eight countries. We then estimated the distribution of suitable tapir habitat within a Maxent-modeling framework. Though there are some clear areas of over- and under- predicted habitat, the resultant models allowed us to significantly update the potential distribution map of Baird’s tapir. We estimate that 39.4% of the available area is suitable for tapirs, but only 27.2% of that habitat occurs in protected areas. We discuss the areas that comprise suitable tapir habitat, and identify global and local threats in each country.
Files
TSG_NL_July2015_Final_Schank.pdf
Additional details
Related works
- Is supplement to
- https://zenodo.org/record/18557 (URL)