Habitat suitability and protection status of four species of amphibians in the Dominican Republic

Sangermano, Florencia; Bol, Leslie; Galvis, Pedro A.; Gullison, Raymond E.; Hardner, Jared; Ross, Gail S.

doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2015.06.002

Cited by 25 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Unfortunately, Haiti's neighbor, the Dominican Republic, is not a major refuge for Haitian species because more than half of the species surveyed (51%, average) on mountains with primary forest are endemic to Haiti and 12% are endemic to an individual mountain in Haiti (SI Appendix). In addition, forest loss in the Dominican Republic is a threat to that country's biodiversity (21).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Haiti’s biodiversity threatened by nearly complete loss of primary forest

Hedges

Cohen

Timyan³

et al. 2018

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Tropical forests hold most of Earth’s biodiversity. Their continued loss through deforestation and agriculture is the main threat to species globally, more than disease, invasive species, and climate change. However, not all tropical forests have the same ability to sustain biodiversity. Those that have been disturbed by humans, including forests previously cleared and regrown (secondary growth), have lower levels of species richness compared with undisturbed (primary) forests. The difference is even greater considering extinctions that will later emanate from the disturbance (extinction debt). Here, we find that Haiti has less than 1% of its original primary forest and is therefore among the most deforested countries. Primary forest has declined over three decades inside national parks, and 42 of the 50 highest and largest mountains have lost all primary forest. Our surveys of vertebrate diversity (especially amphibians and reptiles) on mountaintops indicates that endemic species have been lost along with the loss of forest. At the current rate, Haiti will lose essentially all of its primary forest during the next two decades and is already undergoing a mass extinction of its biodiversity because of deforestation. These findings point to the need, in general, for better reporting of forest cover data of relevance to biodiversity, instead of “total forest” as defined by the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization. Expanded detection and monitoring of primary forest globally will improve the efficiency of conservation measures, inside and outside of protected areas.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Haiti’s biodiversity threatened by nearly complete loss of primary forest

Hedges

Cohen

Timyan³

et al. 2018

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Although our SDMs indicate suitable environmental conditions are still present across large areas of the Dominican Republic, and local hunting of native mammals is thought to have ceased, solenodon and hutia populations might still be reduced or absent in areas of good‐quality habitat due to competition or predation by invasive mammals (Turvey et al, 2014). Furthermore, land cover and tree cover are included within final total survey models for both solenodons and hutias, with probability of presence increasing with tree cover, but forest loss in the Dominican Republic is estimated at >11% per year (higher than regional averages for the Neotropics) and is accelerating, even within many protected areas (Lloyd & León, 2019; Pasachnik, Carreras De León, & León, 2016; Sangermano et al, 2015), and with tourism infrastructural development impacting mangrove ecosystems required by hutias (Meyer‐Arendt, Byrd, & Hamilton, 2013). Our SDMs therefore predict the distribution of current conservation‐priority landscapes for both species, but these landscapes require further fieldwork to investigate continued presence of native mammals, especially for regions with predicted habitat suitability but lacking records (e.g., Sierra de Neiba), combined with targeted spatial management to maintain key habitat integrity into the future.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We obtained land cover data for 2004 (representing the most recent publically available data) from the Dominican Republic Ministry of Environment (cf. Sangermano et al, 2015); we again combined similar habitat types into broader grouped categories for analysis, resulting in a final set of 45 categories. Additional bioclimatic variables (e.g., from http://www.worldclim.org) could not be included because these are only available at coarser spatial resolution.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing congruence of opportunistic records and systematic surveys for predicting Hispaniolan mammal species distributions

Turvey

Kennerley

Hudson

et al. 2020

Ecology and Evolution

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Comparative assessment of the relative information content of different independent spatial data types is necessary to evaluate whether they provide congruent biogeographic signals for predicting species ranges. Opportunistic occurrence records and systematically collected survey data are available from the Dominican Republic for Hispaniola’s surviving endemic non‐volant mammals, the Hispaniolan solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus) and Hispaniolan hutia (Plagiodontia aedium); opportunistic records (archaeological, historical and recent) exist from across the entire country, and systematic survey data have been collected from seven protected areas. Species distribution models were developed in maxent for solenodons and hutias using both data types, with species habitat suitability and potential country‐level distribution predicted using seven biotic and abiotic environmental variables. Three different models were produced and compared for each species: (a) opportunistic model, with starting model incorporating abiotic‐only predictors; (b) total survey model, with starting model incorporating biotic and abiotic predictors; and (c) reduced survey model, with starting model incorporating abiotic‐only predictors to allow further comparison with the opportunistic model. All models predict suitable environmental conditions for both solenodons and hutias across a broadly congruent, relatively large area of the Dominican Republic, providing a spatial baseline of conservation‐priority landscapes that might support native mammals. Correlation between total and reduced survey models is high for both species, indicating the substantial explanatory power of abiotic variables for predicting Hispaniolan mammal distributions. However, correlation between survey models and opportunistic models is only moderately positive. Species distribution models derived from different data types can provide different predictions about habitat suitability and conservation‐priority landscapes for threatened species, likely reflecting incompleteness and bias in spatial sampling associated with both data types. Models derived using both opportunistic and systematic data must therefore be applied critically and cautiously.

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“…In order to extract the appropriate percent tree cover that would separate forest from non-forest in the Dominican Republic, we intersected the MODIS vegetation continuous fields (VCF) percent tree cover data with the land cover map and used the average percent tree cover within densely forested areas as the threshold. Although the average percent tree cover was 48%, the threshold was rounded up to 50% to produce a more conservative definition forest [7] .…”

Section: Data Experimental Design Materials and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest baseline and deforestation map of the Dominican Republic through the analysis of time series of MODIS data

Sangermano

Bol²,

Galvis³

et al. 2015

Data in Brief

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Deforestation is one of the major threats to habitats in the Dominican Republic. In this work we present a forest baseline for the year 2000 and a deforestation map for the year 2011. Maps were derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Radiometer (MODIS) products at 250 m resolution. The vegetation continuous fields product (MOD44B) for the year 2000 was used to produce the forest baseline, while the vegetation indices product (MOD13Q1) was used to detect change between 2000 and 2011. Major findings based on the data presented here are reported in the manuscript “Habitat suitability and protection status of four species of amphibians in the Dominican Republic” (Sangermano et al., Appl. Geogr.,) [7].63, 2015, 55–65

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Habitat suitability and protection status of four species of amphibians in the Dominican Republic

Cited by 25 publications

References 59 publications

Haiti’s biodiversity threatened by nearly complete loss of primary forest

Haiti’s biodiversity threatened by nearly complete loss of primary forest

Assessing congruence of opportunistic records and systematic surveys for predicting Hispaniolan mammal species distributions

Forest baseline and deforestation map of the Dominican Republic through the analysis of time series of MODIS data

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