Predicting the potential suitable distribution area of Emeia pseudosauteri in Zhejiang Province based on the MaxEnt model

Abstract

Human activities, including urbanization, industrialization, agricultural pollution, and land use, have contributed to the increased fragmentation of natural habitats and decreased biodiversity in Zhejiang Province as a result of socioeconomic development. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the protection of ecologically significant species can play a crucial role in restoring biodiversity. Emeia pseudosauteri is regarded as an excellent environmental indicator, umbrella and flagship species because of its unique ecological attributes and strong public appeal. Assessing and predicting the potential suitable distribution area of this species in Zhejiang Province can help in the widespread conservation of biodiversity. We used the MaxEnt ecological niche model to evaluate the habitat suitability of E. pseudosauteri in Zhejiang Province to understand the potential distribution pattern and environmental characteristics of suitable habitats for this species, and used the AUC (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve) and TSS (true skill statistics) to evaluate the model performance. The results showed that the mean AUC value was 0.985, the standard deviation was 0.011, the TSS average value was 0.81, and the model prediction results were excellent. Among the 11 environmental variables used for modeling, temperature seasonality (Bio_4), altitude (Alt) and distance to rivers (Riv_dis) were the key variables affecting the distribution area of E. pseudosauteri, with contributions of 33.5%, 30% and 15.9%, respectively. Its main suitable distribution area is in southern Zhejiang Province and near rivers, at an altitude of 50–300 m, with a seasonal variation in temperature of 7.7–8 °C. Examples include the Ou River, Nanxi River, Wuxi River, and their tributary watersheds. This study can provide a theoretical basis for determining the scope of E. pseudosauteri habitat protection, population restoration, resource management and industrial development in local areas.

Expanding the Distribution of Prosthechea jauana (Orchidaceae) in the Pantepui and Highlighting the Urgent Need for Conservation Strategies in the Region in Face of Climate Change

“…AUC values less than 0.7 indicate poor model performance, AUC values between 0.7 and 0.9 indicate moderate model performance, and AUC values greater than 0.9 indicate excellent model performance. Similarly, TSS values of 0.2–0.5 indicate a poor model, 0.6–0.8 indicate a good model, and greater than 0.8 indicate an excellent model [ 52 ]. We used ‘maximize test sensitivity plus specificity’ as a threshold criterion to obtain binary predictions from the model.…”

Impacts of physiological characteristics and human activities on the species distribution models of orchids taking the Hengduan Mountains as a case

“…We employed three indicators to evaluate the performance of our models: the area under the receiver operating character curve (AUC), the Kappa value, and the true skill statistic (TSS) (Ali et al, 2021 ; Li et al, 2023 ; Moameri et al, 2022 ). The AUC represents the probability, for a randomly selected observation, that the correct classification of the model is higher than the incorrect.…”

Habitat Suitability and Determinants for Anatidae in Multi-Watershed Composite Wetlands in Anhui, China

“…The substitution of Anatidae occurrence points into the MaxEnt model requires preprocessing. The distribution records of each Anatidae species were meticulously screened, eliminating offset values and redundant data, ensuring model accuracy and eliminating model bias caused by spatial autocorrelation [22]. Only Anatidae species with over 10 distribution records were selected as research objects, and in each grid of approximately 1 km 2 , only one distribution point record was maintained for each species, this preprocessing operation was performed in R 4.2.3 using the "ENMTools 1.1.2" package [23,24].…”