Improving landscape connectivity through habitat restoration: application for Asian elephant conservation in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, China

Li, Wenwen; Liu, Peng; Yang, Nian; Chen, Shang; Guo, Xulin; Wang, Bin; Zhang, Li

doi:10.1111/1749-4877.12713

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Overall, we find that the timing and rate of migration is a critical predictor of the genetic make-up of recovered populations and that some combinations of these parameters can send newly connected populations on entirely new evolutionary trajectories. Through this work, we add to the body of evidence that identifies habitat suitability, management actions, and population connectivity as the most limiting factors for a species' long-term viability [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60] and provide a model that can evaluate the risks and benefits of common management strategies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat remediation followed by managed connectivity reduces unwanted changes in evolutionary trajectory of high extirpation risk populations

Lamka,

Willoughby

2024

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As we continue to convert green spaces into roadways and buildings, connectivity between populations and biodiversity will continue to decline. In threatened and endangered species, this trend is particularly concerning because the cessation of immigration can cause increased inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity, leading to lower adaptability and higher extirpation probabilities in these populations. Unfortunately, monitoring changes in genetic diversity from management actions such as assisted migration and predicting the extent of introduced genetic variation that is needed to prevent extirpation is difficult and costly in situ. Therefore, we designed an agent-based model to link population-wide genetic variability and the influx of unique alleles via immigration to population stability and extirpation outcomes. These models showed that management of connectivity can be critical in restoring at-risk populations and reducing the effects of inbreeding depression. However, the rescued populations were more similar to the migrant source population (average FST range 0.05–0.10) compared to the historical recipient population (average FST range 0.23–0.37). This means that these management actions not only recovered the populations from the effects of inbreeding depression, but they did so in a way that changed the evolutionary trajectory that was predicted and expected for these populations prior to the population crash. This change was most extreme in populations with the smallest population sizes, which are representative of critically endangered species that could reasonably be considered candidates for restored connectivity or translocation strategies. Understanding how these at-risk populations change in response to varying management interventions has broad implications for the long-term adaptability of these populations and can improve future efforts for protecting locally adapted allele complexes when connectivity is restored.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat remediation followed by managed connectivity reduces unwanted changes in evolutionary trajectory of high extirpation risk populations

Lamka,

Willoughby

2024

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Overall, we find that the timing and rate of migration is a critical predictor of the genetic make-up of recovered populations and that some combinations of these parameters can send newly connected populations on entirely new evolutionary trajectories. Through this work, we add to the body of evidence that identifies habitat suitability, management actions, and population connectivity as the most limiting factors for a species’ long-term viability (Bouzat et al 2009; Baling et al 2016; Bubac et al 2019; Hilty et al 2020; Goicolea et al 2022; Gonzalez et al 2023; Li et al 2023; Smith et al 2023) and provide a model that can evaluate the risks and benefits of common management strategies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat remediation followed by managed connectivity reduces unwanted changes in evolutionary trajectory of high extirpation risk populations

Lamka,

Willoughby

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As we continue to convert green spaces into roadways and buildings, connectivity between populations and biodiversity will continue to decline. In threatened and endangered species, this trend is particularly concerning because the cessation of immigration can cause increased inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity, leading to lower adaptability and higher extirpation probabilities in these populations. Unfortunately, monitoring changes in genetic diversity from management actions such as assisted migration and predicting the extent of introduced genetic variation that is needed to prevent extirpation is difficult and costly in situ. Therefore, we designed an agent-based model to link population-wide genetic variability and the influx of unique alleles via immigration to population stability and extirpation outcomes. These models showed that management of connectivity can be critical in restoring at-risk populations and reducing the effects of inbreeding depression; increased connectivity prevented extirpation for the majority of scenarios we considered (71.5% of critically endangered populations and 100% of endangered and vulnerable populations). However, the rescued populations were more similar to the migrant source population (average FSTrange 0.05 – 0.10) compared to the historical recipient population (average FSTrange 0.23 – 0.37). This means that these management actions not only recovered the populations from the effects of inbreeding depression, but they did so in a way that changed the evolutionary trajectory that was predicted and expected for these populations prior to the population crash. This change was most extreme in populations with the smallest population sizes, which are representative of critically endangered species that could reasonably be considered candidates for restored connectivity or translocation strategies. Understanding how these at-risk populations change in response to varying management interventions has broad implications for the long-term adaptability of these populations and can improve future efforts for protecting locally adapted allele complexes when connectivity is restored.

show abstract

“…Zhou and Zeng (2022) monitored Asian elephants entering Menglun Nature Reserve and concluded that Asian elephants had a daily activity radius of 2-15 km. We finally chose a buffer zone of 10 km for the study, and some experts (Li, 2021) also pointed out that the average habitat extent of Asian elephants in natural forests is 10 km 2 .…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring of human activities around the Asian elephant reserve based on NPP-VIIRS night light remote sensing images: A case study in Xishuangbanna, China

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) have a wide range of foraging needs and heterogeneous habitat preferences that bring them close to the forest edge. Currently, most of the range of wild elephants is located outside protected areas (PA). Nighttime light data (NTL) has been used as a component of human footprint due to its characteristics of characterizing the intensity of human activities and spatio-temporal continuity. We chose Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, the main distribution area of Asian elephants, as the study area and used NTL to monitor human activities, supplemented by land cover (LC) type data, to study the Asian elephant sanctuary and its surrounding areas, and found that: 1) NTL features inside and outside the PA are approaching, and the boundary effect of the sanctuary is weakening; 2) The NTL gathering area in the study area is mainly distributed in the south of the PA, 86.21% of the area’s nighttime lights have a significant increase trend, and the human activity range is evolving toward the southeast in the past decade; 3) the percentage of areas with a significant increasing trend of NTL under different LC types is greater than decreasing, nearly 50% of the forest showed an increasing trend of NTL. LC types with reduced forest have been converted to cropland and building in the last decade.

show abstract

Improving landscape connectivity through habitat restoration: application for Asian elephant conservation in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, China

Cited by 7 publications

References 58 publications

Habitat remediation followed by managed connectivity reduces unwanted changes in evolutionary trajectory of high extirpation risk populations

Habitat remediation followed by managed connectivity reduces unwanted changes in evolutionary trajectory of high extirpation risk populations

Habitat remediation followed by managed connectivity reduces unwanted changes in evolutionary trajectory of high extirpation risk populations

Monitoring of human activities around the Asian elephant reserve based on NPP-VIIRS night light remote sensing images: A case study in Xishuangbanna, China

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About