Avaliação de modelos de distribuição de espécies e sua aplicação na conservação da onça-pintada (Panthera onca)

• Autor(a) principal: TÔRRES, Natália Mundim
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFG
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tde/2634
• topic: Modelos de distribuição de espécies; onça-pintada; conservação; 1.Modelos de Distribuição de Espécies 2.Onça-pintada - Conservação; Models of species distribution, jaguar, conservation; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ECOLOGIA::ECOLOGIA TEORICA

Recently, Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) has been widely used as base for several types of analyses, including evaluations of climate changing impact on species distribution and conservation strategies settlement. This methodology enables the prediction of potential geographic distribution based on species ecological requirements, extrapolating data from known occurrences to unknown areas. There is a wide variety of methods which presents different capabilities to synthesize the significant relationships between species data and the environmental variables used as preditors. These variations are consequences of a series of factors that influence model s performance, such as species characteristics, the kind and quantity of data available, and the scale of the analyses. In this study we adopted the jaguar as a model to evaluate eleven SDM. It was evaluated the spatial autocorrelation effects between presence records on model s performance, and the relationship between environmental suitability obtained through these methods and jaguar population density. The obtained results were used as a basis for the evaluation of jaguar conservation topics, including analyses of how global climate changing and land use predictions will affect its distribution and evaluation of protected areas system in maintaining suitable areas for species occurrence in the future. It was demonstrated that depending on the model applied, the species data amount can be more influential than the spatial autocorrelation between presence points, and that the expected positive relationship between model-based suitability estimate and jaguar density was found only for four SDM, but always with a low coefficient of determination showing a weak data fitness. The analyses also showed that suitability values inside protected areas are greater than expected by null model, and this difference tend to increase with the global climate change scenario evaluated, demonstrating that it is not expected that environmental suitable areas for jaguars will shift out from the existing protected areas. Considering future predictions, the main conclusion is that some regions which must go through an environmental suitability increase for jaguar occurrence in the future will be converted from natural vegetation to agricultural land, indicating that the opportunities for jaguar s effective conservation actions are daily becoming more restricted, in such a way that the calling for a proactive conservation approach is urgent.