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      Ecological and Geographical Analysis of the Distribution of the Mountain Tapir ( Tapirus pinchaque) in Ecuador: Importance of Protected Areas in Future Scenarios of Global Warming

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          Abstract

          In Ecuador, Tapirus pinchaque is considered to be critically endangered. Although the species has been registered in several localities, its geographic distribution remains unclear, and the effects of climate change and current land uses on this species are largely unknown. We modeled the ecological niche of T. pinchaque using MaxEnt, in order to assess its potential adaptation to present and future climate change scenarios. We evaluated the effects of habitat loss due by current land use, the ecosystem availability and importance of Ecuadorian System of Protected Areas into the models. The model of environmental suitability estimated an extent of occurrence for species of 21,729 km 2 in all of Ecuador, mainly occurring along the corridor of the eastern Ecuadorian Andes. A total of 10 Andean ecosystems encompassed ~98% of the area defined by the model, with herbaceous paramo, northeastern Andean montane evergreen forest and northeastern Andes upper montane evergreen forest being the most representative. When considering the effect of habitat loss, a significant reduction in model area (~17%) occurred, and the effect of climate change represented a net reduction up to 37.86%. However, the synergistic effect of both climate change and habitat loss, given current land use practices, could represent a greater risk in the short-term, leading to a net reduction of 19.90 to 44.65% in T. pinchaque’s potential distribution. Even under such a scenarios, several Protected Areas harbor a portion (~36 to 48%) of the potential distribution defined by the models. However, the central and southern populations are highly threatened by habitat loss and climate change. Based on these results and due to the restricted home range of T. pinchaque, its preference for upland forests and paramos, and its small estimated population size in the Andes, we suggest to maintaining its current status as Critically Endangered in Ecuador.

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          Amazon deforestation and climate change.

          A coupled numerical model of the global atmosphere and biosphere has been used to assess the effects of Amazon deforestation on the regional and global climate. When the tropical forests in the model were replaced by degraded grass (pasture), there was a significant increase in surface temperature and a decrease in evapotranspiration and precipitation over Amazonia. In the simulation, the length of the dry season also increased; such an increase could make reestablishment of the tropical forests after massive deforestation particularly difficult.
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            Sample selection bias and presence-only distribution models: implications for background and pseudo-absence data.

            Most methods for modeling species distributions from occurrence records require additional data representing the range of environmental conditions in the modeled region. These data, called background or pseudo-absence data, are usually drawn at random from the entire region, whereas occurrence collection is often spatially biased toward easily accessed areas. Since the spatial bias generally results in environmental bias, the difference between occurrence collection and background sampling may lead to inaccurate models. To correct the estimation, we propose choosing background data with the same bias as occurrence data. We investigate theoretical and practical implications of this approach. Accurate information about spatial bias is usually lacking, so explicit biased sampling of background sites may not be possible. However, it is likely that an entire target group of species observed by similar methods will share similar bias. We therefore explore the use of all occurrences within a target group as biased background data. We compare model performance using target-group background and randomly sampled background on a comprehensive collection of data for 226 species from diverse regions of the world. We find that target-group background improves average performance for all the modeling methods we consider, with the choice of background data having as large an effect on predictive performance as the choice of modeling method. The performance improvement due to target-group background is greatest when there is strong bias in the target-group presence records. Our approach applies to regression-based modeling methods that have been adapted for use with occurrence data, such as generalized linear or additive models and boosted regression trees, and to Maxent, a probability density estimation method. We argue that increased awareness of the implications of spatial bias in surveys, and possible modeling remedies, will substantially improve predictions of species distributions.
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              Elevation increases in moth assemblages over 42 years on a tropical mountain.

              Physiological research suggests that tropical insects are particularly sensitive to temperature, but information on their responses to climate change has been lacking-even though the majority of all terrestrial species are insects and their diversity is concentrated in the tropics. Here, we provide evidence that tropical insect species have already undertaken altitude increases, confirming the global reach of climate change impacts on biodiversity. In 2007, we repeated a historical altitudinal transect, originally carried out in 1965 on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, sampling 6 moth assemblages between 1,885 and 3,675 m elevation. We estimate that the average altitudes of individuals of 102 montane moth species, in the family Geometridae, increased by a mean of 67 m over the 42 years. Our findings indicate that tropical species are likely to be as sensitive as temperate species to climate warming, and we urge ecologists to seek other historic tropical samples to carry out similar repeat surveys. These observed changes, in combination with the high diversity and thermal sensitivity of insects, suggest that large numbers of tropical insect species could be affected by climate warming. As the highest mountain in one of the most biodiverse regions of the world, Mount Kinabalu is a globally important refuge for terrestrial species that become restricted to high altitudes by climate warming.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Academic Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                23 March 2015
                2015
                : 10
                : 3
                : e0121137
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Laboratorio de Biogeografía, Departamento de Biología Evolutiva, Instituto de Ecología, A.C, carretera antigua a Coatepec No. 351, El Haya, 91070 Xalapa, Veracruz, México
                [2 ]Fundación EcoCiencia, Programa para la Conservación de Especies Amenazadas de Extinción en Ecuador, Pasaje Estocolmo E2-166 and Av. Amazonas, Quito, Ecuador
                [3 ]Museo Ecuatoriano de Ciencias Naturales, Sección de Vertebrados, División de Herpetología, calle Rumipamba 341 y Av. de los Shyris, Quito, Ecuador
                [4 ]Centro de Modelado Científico, Eje BioCiencias, Universidad del Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela
                [5 ]Master Biodiversidad en Áreas Tropicales y su Conservación, Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP)-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas de España (SCIC), Madrid, España
                [6 ]Proyecto de conservación del Tapir Andino (Tapirus pinchaque) en la vertiente Oriental de los Andes Centrales del Ecuador; Fundación EcoCiencia, Quito, Ecuador
                [7 ]Master en Espacios Naturales Protegidos, Fundación Fernando González Bernáldez- Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, España
                [8 ]Departamento Central de Investigación, Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí, Manta, Ecuador
                Federal University of Goiás, BRAZIL
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: HMO-A DAP-T. Performed the experiments: HMO-A DAP-T IG-L. Analyzed the data: HMO-A DAP-T IG-L DJL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HMO-A DAP-T. Wrote the paper: HMO-A DAP-T IG-L DJL. Compiled the database of available records and performed the fieldwork: HMO-A DAP-T IG-L.

                Article
                PONE-D-14-29629
                10.1371/journal.pone.0121137
                4370470
                25798851
                6f08e01e-7bcf-401a-9f73-cf6be0c9585c
                Copyright @ 2015

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

                History
                : 5 August 2014
                : 10 February 2015
                Page count
                Figures: 5, Tables: 4, Pages: 20
                Funding
                This project received financial support by EcoFondo-Ecuador, Programa para la Conservación de Especies y Ecosistemas Amenazados de Extinción en Ecuador sponsored by Fundación Ecociencia, Fundación Zoológica del Ecuador and the UICN/SSC Tapir Specialist Group-Ecuador. Additional field equipment were provided by a grant from Idea Wild.
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