Current and future ecological niche modeling of Tragopans species in the Himalayan region
Student name: Ms Suman Behera
Guide: Dr Anu Rani Sharma
Year of completion: 2017
Host Organisation: Wildlife Trust of India
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Rahul Kaul
Abstract: The Tragopans species chosen for the preservation of species, i.e., Blyth's Tragopan,
Satyr tragopan, Temminck's Tragopan and Western tragopan are categorised as
threatened or near threatened. They are only found in the Himalayan region. The study
was carried out with the aim of evaluation of habitat overlaps level and explaining
ecological separation among these coexisting species. This study is carried out in Indian
Himalayas including Nepal and Bhutan. Presence data for these kind of species are
often sparse or clustered which makes difficult to model their distribution using any
modeling approach. Ecological Niche Modeling has been performed. Maximum Entropy
Modeling software was used to estimate the suitable habitat of these species as well as
their distribution (prediction) for the years 2050 and 2070 of two different emission
scenario(RCP 2.6 & 8.5)o respectively on the basis of Topographic variables and
bioclim's future climatic variables. Results indicate that the future prediction models are
closely related to current model. The currently highly contributing factors that indicate
the probability occurrence of species are Annual precipitation Amount (37.2%) for
Tragopan blythii, DEM(23.2%) for Tragopan Satyra, Precipitation of coldest
quarter(50.7%) for Tragopan melanocephalus ,and Mean Diurnal range(33.9%) for
Tragopan temminckii. Results of the study also suggested that there are some possibility
of overlaps between Blyth tragopan or Temminck's Tragopan species. It has also proved
that species are overlapping Blyth's tragopan either with Temminck's or Satyr. It was
concluded that the habitat is decline in the year 2050 & 2070(RCP 8.5).
Keywords: ENM, Tragopans, MAXENT, GIS, Overlap species
