Biodiversity Data Journal :
Research Article
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Corresponding author: Pablo Medrano-Vizcaíno (pabmedrano@hotmail.com)
Academic editor: Ricardo Moratelli
Received: 06 Dec 2019 | Accepted: 16 Jan 2020 | Published: 28 Jan 2020
© 2020 Pablo Medrano-Vizcaíno, Patricia Gutiérrez-Salazar
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Medrano-Vizcaíno P, Gutiérrez-Salazar P (2020) Current and future suitable habitat areas for Nasuella olivacea (Gray, 1865) in Colombia and Ecuador and analysis of its distribution across different land uses. Biodiversity Data Journal 8: e49164. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.8.e49164
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Nasuella olivacea is an endemic mammal from the Andes of Ecuador and Colombia. Due to its rarity, aspects about its natural history, ecology and distribution patterns are not well known, therefore, research is needed to generate knowledge about this carnivore and a first step is studying suitable habitat areas. We performed Ecological Niche Models and applied future climate change scenarios (2.6 and 8.5 RCP) to determine the potential distribution of this mammal in Colombia and Ecuador, with current and future climate change conditions; furthermore, we analysed its distribution along several land covers. We found that N. olivacea is likely to be found in areas where no records have been reported previously; likewise, climate change conditions would increase suitable distribution areas. Concerning land cover, 73.4% of N. olivacea potential distribution was located outside Protected Areas (PA), 46.1% in Forests and 40.3% in Agricultural Lands. These findings highlight the need to further research understudied species, furthering our understanding about distribution trends and responses to changing climatic conditions, as well as informig future PA designing. These are essential tools for supporting wildlife conservation plans, being applicable for rare species whose biology and ecology remain unknown.
Ecological Niche, Maxent, Tropical Andes, Mountain Coati, Procyonidae
Nasuella olivacea (Gray, 1865) is a rare and small carnivore, endemic to the forests and paramo of the Andes of Colombia and Ecuador (
In Ecuador, its presence is reported in the provinces of Imbabura, Carchi, Pichincha, Cotopaxi, Bolívar, Tungurahua, Chimborazo, Cañar, Azuay, Loja and Napo (
Although this species maintains a wide distribution range due to its tolerance to habitat alterations (
Nasuella olivacea is diurnal, terrestrial, arboreal and gregarious (only adult males are solitary;
In Colombia, Nasuella olivacea occurs in sympatry with Nasua nasua (
In general, current information on distribution limits of most species in the tropical Andes is scarce (
A useful tool to understand these distribution processes is working with Ecological Niche Models (ENMs) as they provide predictions of suitable areas for species distribution (
This research determines potential areas where N. olivacea currently occurs and potential distribution areas under two different climate change scenarios. In addition, we analyse how this species is distributed along Protected Areas (PA) and different land covers.
For the distribution analysis, we used data from Global Biodiversity Information (GBIF; www.gbif.org) and scientific literature where the presence of this mammal is reported (
Using the filtered variables, we executed 100 runs of the model with the resample method of bootstrap, 30% of the records being used for validation of the models and 70% for its generation. For the models with climate change, we used projected variables for the year 2050 (average between 2041 and 2060). We applied the General Circulation Model (GCM) HadGEM2-ES (
Finally, we quantified how its presence is distributed along PA and several categories of land cover. For this, we used the generated potential distribution map with current climate conditions, PA shapefiles (
We obtained 58 records of N. olivacea, from Ecuador and Colombia (Suppl. material
In general, results obtained for the current potential distribution in Ecuador and Colombia reveal that areas with the highest habitat suitability are highlands (Fig.
Comparing the results, it is observed that the current potential distribution covers 93,190.26 km², the future model with RCP 2.6 scenario covers 99,231.7 km², while the future model with RCP 8.5 scenario covers 98,802.69 km² (Fig.
Regarding the factors that could threaten or favour the species population viability, we found that only 24,797.26 km² of its current potential distribution area (93,190.26 km²) are located inside PA. Then, most of its distribution is located outside PA (73.39%) (Fig.
Analysing the results per country, in Colombia we have a potential distribution area of 73,082 km² and only 17,393.67 km² are inside PA; hence, 76.2% belongs to areas that do not have any protection figure, which is obviously negative for the conservation of the Coati. While in Ecuador, the potential distribution area is 20,108.26 km² and only 7,403.59 km² are inside PA; hence, 63.18% is found outside areas that could benefit its population viability (Table
Protected areas (PA) |
Colombia (km²) |
% |
Ecuador (km²) |
% |
Total |
% |
Inside PA |
17,393.67 |
23.8 |
7,403.59 |
36.82 |
24,797.26 |
26.61 |
Outside PA |
55,688.33 |
76.2 |
12,704.67 |
63.18 |
68,393 |
73.39 |
Total |
73,082 |
100 |
20,108.26 |
100 |
93,190.26 |
100 |
Regarding land cover, we found that N. olivacea is mainly distributed along forests and agricultural lands. There are different situations when this aspect is analysed independently for each country. In Ecuador, the distribution is mostly located along forests (60.82%), with a large differencecompared to Agricultural lands (23.47%); on the other hand, Colombia shows similar percentages for Forests (41.99%) and Agricultural lands (44.89%) (Table
Land cover |
Colombia (km²) |
% |
Ecuador (km²) |
% |
Total |
% |
Forests |
30,689.12 |
41.99 |
12,230.23 |
60.82 |
42,919.35 |
46.05 |
Agricultural lands |
32,808 |
44.89 |
4,720 |
23.47 |
37,528 |
40.27 |
Shrubs and herbaceous vegetation |
8,425.25 |
11.53 |
2,630.4 |
13.08 |
11,055.65 |
11.86 |
Anthropic areas |
502.27 |
0.69 |
178.43 |
0.89 |
680.7 |
0.73 |
Near water bodies |
77.73 |
0.11 |
63.33 |
0.31 |
141.06 |
0.15 |
Other areas |
579.63 |
0.79 |
285.87 |
1.42 |
865.5 |
0.93 |
Total |
73,082 |
100 |
20,108.26 |
100 |
93,190.26 |
100 |
In Ecuador, our ENMs show high habitat suitability in the provinces of Morona Santiago, Santo Domingo and Esmeraldas; nevertheless, no field observations in published articles have been reported for these provinces. This finding is possibly explained because it is an understudied species in Ecuador; hence, distribution areas in this country could still not be well defined. However, it is also important to validate ENMs with fieldwork to avoid an overestimation of the predicted distribution areas (
Another aspect to consider is that MaxEnt does not perform ENMs with natural history information (
According to our results, the variables BIO8 = Mean Temperature of Wettest Quarter, Bio4 = Temperature Seasonality and Bio19 = Precipitation of Coldest Quarter represent the highest contribution for the model, which could be related with N. olivacea diet. As this species mainly feeds on invertebrates (which are abundant in rainy seasons), it is possible that low temperatures and precipitation play an important role for its distribution patterns (
Concerning climate change, we found that future scenarios with RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 would increase habitat suitability for N. olivacea. Considering that this species is known to inhabit a wide variety of habitats (
According to prior research, it is expected that species with no restricted altitudinal habitats could increase their distribution area when temperatures increase (
Analysing PA and land cover, we found that, although 46% of the current potential distribution area is located inside forests, only 26% is located inside PA. Likewise, agricultural expansion is another challenge to be solved, with 40% of the current potential distribution area located along agricultural lands. These results represent a great threat for the survival of this mammal, as a poultry predator and a plague for potato crops (
Forest recovery could represent an effective strategy for N. olivacea conservation, but it has to be conducted together with expanding PA, which have been also shown to be a good strategy for conservation and long term management of species (
This article highlights some of the main threats that N. olivacea faces for its conservation; nevertheless, our results show that there is a lot to be known and to be done. Considering that this is the least studied carnivore in the world (
Although future climate change scenarios (even the most pessimistic) would slightly increase the habitat suitability areas for the distribution of Nasuella olivacea, agricultural activities appear as a potential threat for this species. In addition, our results suggest that PA are not playing an important role for the conservation of this carnivore, which would mean that conservation strategies in Ecuador and Colombia need to be reinforced to protect this species.
We thank Thomas Johnson for the linguistic review of this document.
Records used for modelling the potential distribution of Nasuella olivacea in Colombia and Ecuador