Unravelling the historical biogeography of the European rabbit subspecies in the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

1. Understanding the biogeography of species in space and time is essential for the development of evidence-based conservation and management plans. In this paper we propose a biogeographical spatial modelling approach based on the favourability function, and developed under a fuzzy logic framework, to unravel the historical biogeography of the two European wild rabbit subspecies, Oryctolagus cuniculus algirus (Oca) and Oryctolagus cuniculus cuniculus (Occ), in the Iberian Peninsula (IP). 2. We first reviewed published and unpublished information (PhD theses, scientific papers, technical reports, etc.