Predicting suitable nesting sites for the Black caiman (Melanosuchus niger Spix 1825) in the Central Amazon basin


Abstract:

After many years of illegal hunting and commercialization, the populations of the Black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) have been recovering during the last four decades due to the enforcement of a legislation that inhibits their international commercialization. Protecting nesting sites, in which vulnerable life forms (as reproductive females, eggs, and neonates) spend considerable time, is one of the most appropriate conservation actions aimed at preserving caiman populations. Thus, identifying priority areas for this activity should be the primary concern of conservationists. As caiman nesting sites are often found across the areas with difficult access, collecting nest information requires extensive and costly fieldwork efforts. In this context, species distribution modeling can be a valuable tool for predicting the locations of caiman nests in the Amazon basin. In this work, the maximum entropy method (MaxEnt) was applied to model the M. niger nest occurrence in the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve (MSDR) using remotely sensed data. By taking into account the M. niger nesting habitat, the following predictor variables were considered: conditional distance to open water, distance to bare soil, expanded contributing area from drainage, flood duration, and vegetation type. The threshold-independent prediction performance and binary prediction based on the threshold value of 0.9 were evaluated by the area under the curve (AUC) and performing a binomial test, respectively. The obtained results (AUC = 0.967 (Formula presented.) 0.006 and a highly significant binomial test (Formula presented.)) indicated excellent performance of the proposed model in predicting the M. niger nesting occurrence in the MSDR. The variables related to hydrological regimes (conditional distance to open water, expanded contributing area from drainage, and flood duration) most strongly affected the model performance. MaxEnt can be used for developing community-based sustainable management programs to provide socio-economic benefits to local communities and promote species conservation in a much larger area within the Amazon basin.

Año de publicación:

2019

Keywords:

  • maximum entropy modeling
  • nesting habitat
  • Amazonian caiman
  • Amazon floodplain
  • ecological conservation

Fuente:

scopusscopus

Tipo de documento:

Article

Estado:

Acceso abierto

Áreas de conocimiento:

  • Ecología
  • Ecología
  • Biodiversidad

Áreas temáticas de Dewey:

  • Temas específicos de historia natural de los animales
  • Ecología
  • Economía de la tierra y la energía
Procesado con IAProcesado con IA

Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible:

  • ODS 15: Vida de ecosistemas terrestres
  • ODS 14: Vida submarina
  • ODS 8: Trabajo decente y crecimiento económico
Procesado con IAProcesado con IA