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Mammalian Biology

, Volume 87, Issue 1, pp 71–88 | Cite as

Identifying biodiversity hotspots for threatened mammal species in Iran

  • Azita FarashiEmail author
  • Mitra Shariati
  • Mahshid Hosseini
Original investigation
First Online:

Abstract

Conservation biology has much more attention for biodiversity hot spots than before. In order to recognize the hotspots for Iranian terrestrial mammal species that are listed in any red list, nationally or globally, ten Species Distribution Models (SDMs) have been applied. The SDMs evaluation results based on the TSS and AUC values showed that all ten models of habitat suitability perform significantly better than the random selection for all studied species. According to the results, biodiversity hotspots for threatened mammal species are located in north, west and central of Iran, along the Zagros and Alborz mountain range. Therefore, habitats for threatened mammal species have been limited to small parts of Iran (approximately 27% of the country). These areas are severely fragmented and only 57% of them have been announced protected by the current conservation system. The suggestion is that, as the sustainability of these habitats would strongly depend on maintaining dispersal corridors to facilitate the movement of animals among the habitat fragments, conservation efforts should focus on those hotspots which are not formally protected under conservation laws.

Keywords

Conservation Habitat Model Protected area SDMs 
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Copyright information

© Deutsche Gesellschaft für Säugetierkunde, e. V. DGS 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Azita Farashi
    • 1
    Email author
  • Mitra Shariati
    • 2
  • Mahshid Hosseini
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Resource and EnvironmentFerdowsi University of MashhadIran
  2. 2.Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)University of TwenteEnschedethe Netherlands

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