Factors influencing the global distribution of the endangered Egyptian vulture

Abstract

Vultures are ecologically important primarily because of their scavenging role in cleaning carcasses of the environment. Because of anthropogenic impacts, the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) has suffered catastrophic declines in parts of its range and, thus, information about its global distribution and factors influencing its occurrence within this range are essential for its conservation. To this end, we estimated the global distribution of Egyptian vulture and variables related to this distribution. We used occurrence points (n = 4740) from online data sources and literature, environmental variables related to these sites and Maximum Entropy software to model the distribution of this species and its relationship to environmental variables during the entire year, breeding and overwintering. Out of ~ 49 million km2 study area, the Egyptian vulture had a predicted range of 6,599,508 km2 distributed across three continents: Africa, Asia and Europe. The densest distribution was in Southern Europe, India and Northern Africa and a sparser distribution was around Mid and Western Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan. Climate was related to the vulture’s most probable range: in particular medium temperature seasonality and low precipitation during the coldest yearly quarter were important variables regardless of the season of observations examined. Conservation of identified habitats and mitigation of anthropogenic impacts to conserve these vultures are recommended for immediate and long-term conservation of the Egyptian vulture globally.

Factors Affecting Habitat Selection of Endangered Steppe Eagle (Aquila nipalensis) in Pakistan: Implications for Raptors Conservation

“…A total of 288 occurrence data were used in the present study (Figure 1). Out of 288 presence records, 20 were obtained from published literature [13] and about 55 different locations data were obtained from different wildlife photographers, while the remaining 213 presence locations data were retrieved from the GBIF website (https://www.gbif.org, accessed on 21 August 2022), where we included human observations from 2000 to 2021 [29]. The GBIF is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world's governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on earth.…”

Modeling global habitat suitability and environmental predictor of distribution of a Near Threatened avian scavenger at a high spatial resolution

“…We showed that while topography shaped the species' global distribution range, precipitation was the most important determinant of the species distribution in the Kopet Dagh Mountains in Asia (Sheykhi Ilanloo et al, 2020), and food availability was the most important variable in explaining habitat suitability of bearded vulture in the Swiss Alpine range. In comparison with other vulture species, Panthi et al (2021) modeled the global habitat suitability of the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) and found that climate is the most important determinant of the species' global habitat suitability.…”

“…They have been applied to identifying suitable habitats of species (Tellería et al, 2019;Song et al, 2020;Bai et al, 2022;Buechley et al, 2022), predicting the impacts of climate change on species distribution (Escobar-Luján et al, 2022;Zhu et al, 2022), mapping avian hotspots and richness (Moradi et al, 2019), and effectiveness of protected areas for conservation of species (Buechley et al, 2022;Escobar-Luján et al, 2022;Tian et al, 2022). One particular application of SDMs is to model species' global habitat suitability, which is very critical for largescale conservation planning of biodiversity (Panthi et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2022). For instance, Panthi et al (2021) modeled the global habitat suitability of the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) and identified environmental determinants of the species distribution.…”

“…One particular application of SDMs is to model species' global habitat suitability, which is very critical for largescale conservation planning of biodiversity (Panthi et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2022). For instance, Panthi et al (2021) modeled the global habitat suitability of the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) and identified environmental determinants of the species distribution. Thus, SDMs can be used in modeling the global habitat suitability of the bearded vulture at high spatial resolution.…”

Nesting habitat suitability and breeding of Asian woollyneck (Ciconia episcopus) in Nepal

“…We acknowledge that the study would have been more comprehensive if data were available for biological borders of the species, i.e., extended to India. However, MaxEnt is also useful for small-scale prediction, for instance, it has been used to map the habitat of Egyptian vulture in Nepal (Kc et al 2019) as well as its entire range (Panthi et al 2021).…”