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Suitable habitats shifting toward human-dominated landscapes of Asian elephants in China

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Abstract

Tropical forests are undergoing land use change in many regions of the world, with an increasingly prominent trend of landscape fragmentation. Nevertheless, the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) population in tropical forests of China has continued to increase, and their distribution range is expanding to human-modified landscapes, resulting in increased severe human-elephant conflicts. Little is known about the habitat adaptation strategies of Asian elephants in human-dominated habitats. Here, we applied maximum entropy modeling to extensive occurrence data (21,011 independent records) of Asian elephants in southwest China to explore temporal changes in their distribution under climate change. We also identified critical factors shaping their current distribution and habitat selection strategies concerning human-induced land-use changes at multiple spatial scales. We found that the area of suitable habitats for Asian elephants will slightly increase in the future (7,025 km2) compared with the present climatic scenario (6,468 km2). At a finer spatial scale, topographic variables such as elevation (74%) and slope (11%) are the dominant factors shaping the habitat selection of Asian elephants. However, at a larger spatial scale, anthropogenic variables are the main factors associated with the habitat preference of Asian elephants. Most suitable and sub-suitable habitats (65%) of Asian elephants overlap with human-dominated areas. Our findings suggest that the effects of human activity on Asian elephants are scale-dependent and demonstrate that the suitable habitats of Asian elephants in China are shifting to human-dominated regions.

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Funding

This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA23080500), the West Light Foundation of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Yunnan Provincial Youth Talent Support Program (YNWR-QNBJ-2020-127). We thank the Yunnan Provincial Forestry and Grassland Administration, Pu’er Forestry and Grassland Bureau, Jinghong Forestry and Grassland Bureau for permission for this study, and the local rangers for help in fieldwork.

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Author notes

  1. Qiupeng Yu and Zhechang Hu contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution & Yunnan key laboratory of bioaffiliationersity and ecological conservation of Gaoligong Mountain, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Science, Kunming, China

    Qiupeng Yu, Zhechang Hu, Kenneth Otieno Onditi, Xueyou Li & Xuelong Jiang

  2. Kunming College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China

    Qiupeng Yu

  3. School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China

    Cheng Huang

  4. China Center for Special Economic Zone Research, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

    Cheng Huang

  5. Pu’er Forestry and Grassland Bureau, Pu’er, China

    Tongmei Xu

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  1. Qiupeng Yu
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X.J., X.L., Q.Y., and Z.H. involved in conceptualization and methodology. Q.Y., Z.H., and T.X. carried out the investigation. Q.Y. and Z.H. performed data analysis. Q.Y. wrote the manuscript. Q.Y., Z.H., C.H., and K.O. involved in reviewing the manuscript, and X.J. and X.L. involved in supervising the study and finalizing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xueyou Li or Xuelong Jiang.

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Communicated by Xiaoli Shen.

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Yu, Q., Hu, Z., Huang, C. et al. Suitable habitats shifting toward human-dominated landscapes of Asian elephants in China. Biodivers Conserv 33, 685–704 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-023-02766-w

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