Species versus within-species niches: a multi-modelling approach to assess range size of a spring-dwelling amphibian

Abstract

Species Distribution Models (SDMs) can be used to estimate potential geographic ranges and derive indices to assess species conservation status. However, habitat-specialist species require fine-scale range estimates that reflect resource dependency. Furthermore, local adaptation of intraspecific lineages to distinct environmental conditions across ranges have frequently been neglected in SDMs. Here, we propose a multi-stage SDM approach to estimate the distributional range and potential area of occupancy (pAOO) of Neurergus kaiseri, a spring-dwelling amphibian with two climatically-divergent evolutionary lineages. We integrate both broad-scale climatic variables and fine-resolution environmental data to predict the species distribution while examining the performance of lineage-level versus species-level modelling on the estimated pAOO. Predictions of habitat suitability at the landscape scale differed considerably between evolutionary level models. At the landscape scale, spatial predictions derived from lineage-level models showed low overlap and recognised a larger amount of suitable habitats than species-level model. The variable dependency of lineages was different at the landscape scale, but similar at the local scale. Our results highlight the importance of considering fine-scale resolution approaches, as well as intraspecific genetic structure of taxa to estimate pAOO. The flexible procedure presented here can be used as a guideline for estimating pAOO of other similar species.

The least‐cost path analysis of landscape genetics identifies two dispersal routes for the threatened Kaiser's mountain newt (Caudata: Salamandridae)

“…A previous study showed that two lineages of the Kaiser's newt may act differently in response to climate change (Goudarzi et al, 2021). Northern populations of N. kaiseri with higher connectivity (Goudarzi et al, 2019) 4).…”

Fine-scale habitat suitability and connectivity analysis for the core populations of Yellow-spotted mountain pond-breeding newt (Neurergus derjugini) in the west of Iran and east of Iraq

“…In a study by Ficetola et al (2018) to examine the differences between broad-and ne-scales, the results showed that the microhabitat scale is more appropriate to use for the study on salamanders. In a multi-scale study of Neurergus kaiseri by Goudarzi et al (2021), the results showed that ne-scale models effectively reduce uncertainty. For species with local distributions, local factors play a vital role in their habitat and displacement.…”

Niche Divergence at Intraspecific Level in the Hyrcanian Wood Frog, Rana pseudodalmatina: A Phylogenetic, Climatic, and Environmental Survey

“…To create ENMs, we used the maximum entropy model (MaxEnt v 3.4.4; 6 a presence-background approach that has a high prediction power even with a small sample of presence sites (Phillips et al, 2006) and widely used in spatial ecology (Banerjee et al, 2019;Cardoza-Martínez et al, 2019;Martínez-Freiría et al, 2020;Rodríguez-Rodríguez et al, 2020;Goudarzi et al, 2021). We constructed nine distinct models by MaxEnt using (1) BCV at species-level (SL hereafter) and two WRC and ERC, (2) MEV at SL and two WRC and ERC, and (3) integrated BCV + MEV at SL and two WRC and ERC.…”

“…As a result, the final models used to have a beta multiplier of 0.5. Furthermore, we used the bootstrap method to generate 30 replicates, with 75% of the occurrences for model training and 25% for testing (Goudarzi et al, 2021). We used the percentage of contribution and jackknife analyses to determine the importance of each variable.…”