Quantifying the relative contributions of habitat modification and mammalian predators on landscape-scale declines of a threatened river specialist duck.

ABSTRACT: Habitat modification and introduced mammalian predators are linked to global species extinctions and declines, but their relative influences can be uncertain, often making conservation management difficult. Using landscape-scale models, we quantified the relative impacts of habitat modification and mammalian predation on the range contraction of a threatened New Zealand riverine duck. We combined 38 years of whio (Hymenolaimus malacorhynchos) observations with national-scale environmental data to predict relative likelihood of occurrence (RLO) under two scenarios using bootstrapped boosted regression trees (BRT). Our models used training data from contemporary environments to predict the potential contemporary whio distribution across New Zealand riverscapes in the absence of introduced ma

SUBMITTER: Whitehead AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9803212 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature