Modeling the distribution of the Southern yellow-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus gabriellae) using maxent

Cao Thi Hong Nhung; Le Minh Duc; Nguyen Tuan Anh

doi:10.15625/2525-2518/59/5/15890

Author affiliations

Authors

Cao Thi Hong Nhung Department of Environmental Ecology, Faculty of Environmental Science, University of Science, Vietnam National University, Ha Noi, 334 Nguyen Trai, Ha Noi, Viet Nam
Le Minh Duc Department of Environmental Ecology, Faculty of Environmental Science, University of Science, Vietnam National University, Ha Noi, 334 Nguyen Trai, Ha Noi, Viet Nam
Nguyen Tuan Anh Department of Environmental Ecology, Faculty of Environmental Science, University of Science, Vietnam National University, Ha Noi, 334 Nguyen Trai, Ha Noi, Viet Nam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15625/2525-2518/59/5/15890

Keywords:

Maxent, Nomascus gabriellae, Species distribution modeling, Gibbon

Abstract

The Southern Yellow-cheeked Gibbon (Nomascus gabriellae) is an endangered species found only in a small region of Indochina, and its populations have declined in most known sites. In this study, we use Maxent, a robust and widely used species distribution modeling approach, to predict the current and future distributions of the Southern Yellow-cheeked Gibbon over its entire range based on an extensive review of published records. In total, we compile and provide a comprehensive set of known distribution records of the species from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The model results show that N. gabriellae potentially occurs in much of area around the Central Highlands in both Vietnam and Cambodia sides and the southern end of Laos. Our study suggests that protected areas in this region will play a key role in conservation actions for the gibbons. In addition, the distribution of the gibbon in future climate conditions, even in the best-case scenario, is likely to shrink significantly, as the species would have to move upwards to higher elevations. Under such impact, the populations will become more fragmented and restricted to a few areas with higher elevations. Our study also confirms that the climatic difference in distribution ranges may not be fully responsible for the speciation and biogeography of the N. annamensis/gabriellae complex.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Rawson B. M., Insua-Cao P., Ha N. M., Tinh V. N., Duc H. M., Mahood S., Geissmann T., and Roos C. - The Conservation Status of Gibbons in Vietnam, Fauna and Flora International, 2011.

Geissmann T., Trung L. Q., Hoang T. D., Thong V. D., Can D. N., and Tien P. D. - Rarest ape rediscovered in Vietnam, Asian Primates 8 (2003) 8–9.

Thinh V. N., Mootnick A. R., Thanh V. N., Nadler T., and Roos C. - A new species of crested gibbon, from the central Annamite mountain range, Vietnamese J. Primatol. 1 (2010) 1–12.

Sterling E. J., Hurley M. M., and Minh L. D. - Vietnam - A Natural History, Yale University Press, 2006.

Geissmann T., Ha N. M., Rawson B., Timmins R., Traeholt C., and Walston J. - Nomascus gabriellae, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 2008.

Chuong H. V., Duc H. M., Long H. T., Tuan B. V., Covert H. H., and Williams S. E. - A review of the distribution of a new gibbon species: The northern yellow-cheeked crested gibbon Nomascus annamensis Thinh, Mootnick, Thanh, Nadler and Roos, 2010, Primate Conserv. 32 (2018) 185–191.

Thinh V. N., Rawson B., Hallam C., Kenyon M., Nadler T., Walter L., and Roos C. - Phylogeny and distribution of crested gibbons (genus Nomascus) based on mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequence data, Am. J. Primatol. 72 (2010) 1047–1054. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.20861. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.20861

Bang T. V., and Duc H. M. - Initial data on primate fauna of A Yun Pa Propose Natural Reserve, Gia Lai province, Proceedings of the 6th National Conference on Ecology and Biological Resources, 2015, pp. 482-487 (In Vietnamese).

Urbina-Cardona N., Blair M. E., Londoño M. C., Loyola R., Velásquez-Tibatá J., and Morales-Devia H. - Species Distribution Modeling in Latin America: A 25-Year Retrospective Review, Trop. Conserv. Sci. 12 (2019) 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940082919854058. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1940082919854058

Thapa A., Wu R., Hu Y., Nie Y., Singh P. B., Khatiwada J. R., Yan L., Gu X., and Wei F. - Predicting the potential distribution of the endangered red panda across its entire range using MaxEnt modeling, Ecol. Evol. 8 (2018) 10542–10554. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4526. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4526

van Schingen M., Le D. M., Ngo T. H., Pham T. C., Ha Q. Q., Nguyen Q. T., and Ziegler T. - Is there more than one Crocodile Lizard? An Integrative Taxonomic Approach Reveals Vietnamese and Chinese Shinisaurus crocodilurus Represent Separate Conservation and Taxonomic Units, Der Zool. Garten 85 (2016) 240–260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zoolgart.2016.06.001. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zoolgart.2016.06.001

Ren Z., Wang D., Ma A., Hwang J., Bennett A., Sturrock H. J. W., Fan J., Zhang W., Yang D., Feng X., et al. - Predicting malaria vector distribution under climate change scenarios in China: Challenges for malaria elimination, Sci. Rep. 6 (2016) 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep20604. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/srep20604

Tang C. Q., Matsui T., Ohashi H., Dong Y. F., Momohara A., Herrando-Moraira S., Qian S., Yang Y., Ohsawa M., Luu H. T., et al. - Identifying long-term stable refugia for relict plant species in East Asia, Nat. Commun. 9 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06837-3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07727-4

Musher L. J., Galante P. J., Thom G., Huntley J. W., and Blair M. E. - Shifting ecosystem connectivity during the Pleistocene drove diversification and gene‐flow in a species complex of Neotropical birds (Tityridae: Pachyramphus), J. Biogeogr. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13862. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13862

Elith J., H. Graham C., P. Anderson R., Dudík M., Ferrier S., Guisan A., J. Hijmans R., Huettmann F., R. Leathwick J., Lehmann A., et al. - Novel methods improve prediction of species’ distributions from occurrence data, Ecography (Cop.). 29 (2006) 129–151. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2006.0906-7590.04596.x. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2006.0906-7590.04596.x

Phillips S. J., Anderson R. P., and Schapire R. E. - Maximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions, Ecol. Modell. 190 (2006) 231–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2005.03.026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2005.03.026

Phillips S. J., Anderson R. P., Dudík M., Schapire R. E., and Blair M. E. - Opening the black box: an open-source release of Maxent, Ecography (Cop.). 40 (2017) 887–893. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.03049. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.03049

Thinh V. T., Dung T. V., Vinh L. Q., and Nga T. T. - Using maxent to assess the impact of climate change on the distribution of southern yellow-cheeked crested gibbon (Nomascus gabriellae), J. For. Sci. Technol. 2 (2018) 131–140.

Aiello-Lammens M. E., Boria R. A., Radosavljevic A., Vilela B., and Anderson R. P. - spThin: an R package for spatial thinning of species occurrence records for use in ecological niche models, Ecography (Cop.). 38 (2015) 541–545. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.01132. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.01132

R Core Team - R: A language and environment for statistical computing, R Foundation (2020).

Pearson R. G., Raxworthy C. J., Nakamura M., and Townsend P. A. - Predicting species distributions from small numbers of occurrence records: A test case using cryptic geckos in Madagascar, J. Biogeogr. 34 (2007) 102–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01594.x. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01594.x

Fick S. E., and Hijmans R. J. - WorldClim 2: new 1-km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas, Int. J. Climatol. 37 (2017) 4302–4315. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5086. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5086

Anderson R. P., and Raza A. - The effect of the extent of the study region on GIS models of species geographic distributions and estimates of niche evolution: Preliminary tests with montane rodents (genus Nephelomys) in Venezuela, J. Biogeogr. 37 (2010) 1378–1393. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02290.x. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02290.x

Muscarella R., Galante P. J., Soley-Guardia M., Boria R. A., Kass J. M., Uriarte M., and Anderson R. P. - ENMeval: An R package for conducting spatially independent evaluations and estimating optimal model complexity for Maxent ecological niche models, Methods Ecol. Evol. 5 (2014) 1198–1205. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12261. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12261

Warren D. L., and Seifert S. N. - Ecological niche modeling in Maxent: the importance of model complexity and the performance of model selection criteria, Ecol. Appl. 21 (2011) 335–342. https://doi.org/10.1890/10-1171.1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1890/10-1171.1

Wu T., Lu Y., Fang Y., Xin X., Li L., Li W., Jie W., Zhang J., Liu Y., Zhang L., et al. - The Beijing Climate Center Climate System Model (BCC-CSM): The main progress from CMIP5 to CMIP6, Geosci. Model Dev. 12 (2019) 1573–1600. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-1573-2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-1573-2019

Tatebe H., Ogura T., Nitta T., Komuro Y., Ogochi K., Takemura T., Sudo K., Sekiguchi M., Abe M., Saito F., et al. - Description and basic evaluation of simulated mean state, internal variability, and climate sensitivity in MIROC6, Geosci. Model Dev. 12 (2019) 2727–2765. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-2727-2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-2727-2019

Riahi K., van Vuuren D. P., Kriegler E., Edmonds J., O’Neill B. C., Fujimori S., Bauer N., Calvin K., Dellink R., Fricko O., et al. - The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview, Glob. Environ. Chang. 42 (2017) 153–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.05.009. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.05.009

Thinh V. N., Craik R., Nam L. C., Thuong N. V., Kha D. B., and Moc C. H. - A Rapid Survey of Yellow-Cheeked Crested Gibbon and Bird Species in Da Chais Commune, Bi Doup-Nui Ba National Park with a view to developing an ecotourism programme in the area, WWF Vietnam Programme, 2009.

Vu T. T., Tran D. V., Giang T. T., Nguyen V. H., Nguyen M. D., Nguyen T. C., Tuyet N. K., and Doherty P. - A mark-recapture population size estimation of southern yellow-cheeked crested gibbon Nomascus gabriellae (Thomas, 1909) in Chu Yang Sin National Park, Vietnam, Asian Primates J. 6 (2016).

Duc H. M., Bang T. V., and Long V. - Population status of the yellow-cheeked crested gibbon (Nomascus gabriellae) in Ta Dung Nature Reserve, Dak Nong Province, Vietnam, Fauna and Flora International, 2010.

Hoang T. D., Dung L. Van, Tuoc D., and Ha N. M. - Survey results on population status of the Southern Yellow-cheeked Gibbon (Nomascus gabriellae) in Nam Nung and Ta Dung Nature Reserves, Dak Nong, Dak Nong Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, 2014 (In Vietnamese).

Rawson B. M., Clements T., and Hor N. M. - Status and Conservation of Yellow-Cheeked Crested Gibbons (Nomascus gabriellae) in the Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area , Mondulkiri Province, in: Lappan S., Whitaker D. M. (Eds.), The Gibbons: New Perspectives on Small Ape Socioecology and Population Biology, Springer, 2009, pp. 387–408. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-88604-6_18

Vu T. T., Tran L. M., Nguyen M. D., Van T. D., and Ta N. T. - Improving the Estimation of Calling Probability and Correction Factors in Gibbon Monitoring Using the Auditory Point Count Method, Int. J. Primatol. 39 (2018) 222–236. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-018-0030-1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-018-0030-1

Geissmann T., Dang N. X., Lormée N., and Momberg F. - Vietnam Primate Conservation Status Review 2000 - Part 1: Gibbons, Fauna and Flora International, 2000.