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Amir Ansari

Amir Ansari

Academic rank: Associate Professor
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3245-2303
Education: PhD.
ScopusId: 57200737994
Faculty: Agriculture and Environment
Address: Arak University
Phone:

Research

Title
Evaluation of factors affecting predator-prey distribution for grey wolves, wild sheep, and wild goats in Haftad-Gholleh National Park, Iran
Type
JournalPaper
Keywords
Habitat suitability modeling, Environmental niche model, MaxEnt
Year
2021
Journal Journal of Wildlife and Biodiversity
DOI
Researchers Amir Ansari

Abstract

Haftad-Gholleh National Park located in central Iran is inhabited by two prey species: the wild sheep (Ovis orientalis) and the wild goat (Capra aegagrus). Their main predator in the park area is the grey wolf (Canis lupus). We applied a maximum-entropy presence-only approach to model habitat suitability for these three species in the Haftad-Gholleh National Park. Moreover, we studied their niche breadth using ENMTools. Altogether seven environmental variables were incorporated into the final models including the percentage of vegetation cover, slope, aspect, elevation, distance from human activities, distance from water, and distance from the road. Results indicated that habitat variables such as slope, aspect, and distance from water were the most important variables affecting the predictive power of the prey and predator species models. The Grey wolf has a distribution larger than that of the wild goat, but smaller than that of the wild sheep. Interestingly, niche-breadth analysis indicates that the grey wolf has a niche breadth half that of the wild sheep and twice that of the wild goat. Wild sheep have a relatively wide geographical extent and show a tendency to marginal and strictly protected habitats; the grey wolf chooses moderate areas fit for its moderate mobility of habitat variability and dependency to restricted natural habitats, and the wild goat has a relatively narrow geographica