Maksimum Entropi Modelleme Kullanarak Avrupa Yer Sincabı'nın İki Soyhattı Arasındaki İklim Tercihinin Tahmini

Abstract

Spermophilus citellus (Linnaeus, 1766), commonly referred to as the European ground squirrel, exists in specific areas of Central Europe and the Balkans. The species is currently listed as ''vulnerable'' on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Recently genetic studies have shown that the species has two main lineages; the northern and the southern. The northern lineage shows distribution range at the central and western part of the Balkans and Central Europe, whereas the southern lineage is spread in a more limited area, which includes the southern and eastern parts of the Balkans. The purpose of this study is to reveal the potential geographic distribution in Last Glacial Maximum (approximately 22 kya), present and future (average 2070) periods of these lineages using Maximum Entropy modeling (MaxEnt). This study also contributes to comparing the distribution of two lineages between past, present and future periods. The final MaxEnt with ten replicate runs was constructed based on 80 occurrence records from Austria,

European Ground Squirrels at the Edge: Current Distribution Status and Anticipated Impact of Climate on Europe’s Southernmost Population

“…Similar future range contraction to lowland areas due to climate change was also reported for other ground squirrels, such as the Anatolian ground squirrel (Spermophilus xanthoprymnus) [44]. However, our study's findings disagree with the predicted suitable habitat expansion of the European ground squirrel in Greece reported by Demirtaş [43]. That study examined the past, present, and future distribution of the European ground squirrel across Europe, including the southern lineage containing the Greek populations.…”

“…Nineteen variables were considered for the habitat suitability (4500 m) models: 14 bioclimatic variables (WorldClim database version 2.1; [56]), 1 anthropogenic (population density), and 4 environmental (20-year mean normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), soil bulk density, soil texture, and slope). We excluded 5 of the 19 available WorldClim bioclimatic variables from the analysis based on preliminary tests of collinearity, consideration of recent variables included in ecological niche models for the European ground squirrel and its congener, namely, the Anatolian ground squirrel (Spermophilus xanthoprymnus) [43,44], and an emphasis on seasonal mean or range rather than min-max values. Details of the source, initial resolution, and model for which a variable was considered are provided in Table 1.…”

“…Ecological niche modeling (ENM) is a well-established approach for predicting both the distribution of a species across a geographical area, where presence information is limited or imperfect [35], and for assessing the relation of environmental (biotic, abiotic, bioclimatic) and anthropogenic parameters and the species' habitat suitability [36][37][38][39]. The maximum entropy algorithm (MaxEnt; [40][41][42]) is a popular ecological niche modeling method for endangered species, including ground squirrels [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50], as it has high prediction accuracy, even with relatively small datasets, and it requires only presence data [37,[51][52][53][54]. These characteristics make it an ideal tool for the European ground squirrel dataset that we have developed.…”