Climate suitability as a predictor of conservation translocation failure |
| |
Authors: | Joe Bellis David Bourke Joyce Maschinski Katie Heineman Sarah Dalrymple |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, James Parsons Building, Byrom Street, Liverpool, L3 3AF U.K.;2. San Diego Zoo Global and Center for Plant Conservation, 15600 San Pasqual Valley Road, Escondido, CA, 92027 U.S.A. |
| |
Abstract: | The continuing decline and loss of biodiversity has caused an increase in the use of interventionist conservation tools, such as translocation. However, many translocation attempts fail to establish viable populations, with poor release site selection often flagged as an inhibitor of success. We used species distribution models (SDMs) to predict the climate suitability of 102 release sites for amphibians, reptiles, and terrestrial insects and compared suitability predictions between successful and failed attempts. We then quantified the importance of climate suitability relative to 5 other variables frequently considered in the literature as important determinants of translocation success: number of release years, number of individuals released, life stage released, origin of the source population, and position of the release site relative to the species’ range. Probability of translocation success increased as predicted climate suitability increased and this effect was the strongest among the variables we considered, accounting for 48.3% of the variation in translocation outcome. These findings should encourage greater consideration of climate suitability when selecting release sites for conservation translocations and we advocate the use of SDMs as an effective way to do this. |
| |
Keywords: | conservation planning ectotherm reintroduction release site species distribution model ectotermo modelo de distribución de especies planeación de la conservación reintroducción sitio de liberación 物种分布模型 变温动物 重引入 释放位点 保护规划 |
|
|