Abstract
Climate change is among the greatest drivers of biodiversity loss, threatening up to 15–30% of wildlife species by the end of the twenty-first century. In the current study, we estimated the current suitable habitat of endangered Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) in its native range of Asia and forecasted for its future distribution range in the scenario of the climate change. We collected data on occurrence records of Indian pangolin using burrow counts, trail camera traps, and also searching for its previously published literature, during 2021–2023. We downloaded bioclimatic data for current (1970–2000) and future (2041–2060, 2061–2080, 2081–2100) climate scenarios from the WorldClim database using the Hadley Global Environment Model (HadGEM3- GC31-LL). We used MaxEnt software to predict current and future distributions of Indian pangolin. We collected overall a total of 560 locations of Indian pangolin occurrence and analyzed. . Jackknife tests of variable importance showed that the contribution of annual mean temperature (bio1) was greatest (33.4%), followed by the mean temperature of the coldest quarter (bio-12, 29.3%). The maxent model predicted that during 1970–2000, highly suitable habitat for Indian pangolin was (7270 km2 , 2.2%), followed by moderately suitable (12,418 km2 , 3.7%), less suitable (49,846 km2 , 14.8%), and unsuitable habitat (268,355 km2 , 79.4%). The predicted loss in the suitable habitat of the Indian pangolin was greatest (26.97%) under SSP 585 followed by SSP 126 (23.67%) during the time 2061–2080. Our study provides the current and future habitat ranges of Indian pangolin in the face of a changing climate.
Presenters
Tariq MahmoodAssociate Professor, Zoology, Wildlife and Fisheries, PMAS Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi Pakistan, Punjab, Pakistan
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Assessing Impacts in Diverse Ecosystems
KEYWORDS
Indian Pangolin, Habitat Suitability, Environmental Variables, Climate Change, Future Prediction
