Ecological niche differentiation between Lacerta media and Lacerta strigata (Sauria: Lacertidae) in Iran
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Ecological niche differentiation between Lacerta media and Lacerta strigata (Sauria: Lacertidae) in Iran Nastaran Heidari 1 Received: 22 June 2020 / Accepted: 9 September 2020 # Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences 2020
Abstract Ecological niche modeling (ENM) is one way to achieve niche differentiation. In the present study, habitat suitability of Lacerta media Lantz & Cyrén, 1920 and Lacerta strigata Eichwald, 1831 was evaluated and the ecological niche spaces were evaluated between the two species. Based on the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) result, northwestern and western Iran has been predicted as the most suitable for L. media and the southern Caspian Sea region has been predicted as suitable for L. strigata presence. Also there are several records of L. strigata presence in East Azarbaijan and Fars provinces and L. media presence in Alborz, Markazi and Esfahan provinces that are currently situated outside the suitable predicted region. Maximum temperature of the coldest month and precipitation of the warmest quarter with contribution more than 68% and 76% for L. media and L. strigata, respectively, were distinguished as the key contributing factors for the presence of both species. However, ecological niche overlap was calculated between the two species and that the niches were significantly different. Keywords Lacerta media . Lacerta strigata . Lacertidae . Coldest months . Habitat degradation . Summer precipitation
Introduction The family Lacertidae has more than 47 species in the Iranian Plateau (Šmíd et al. 2014). The traditional genus Lacerta included most of the species in this family, though a recent taxonomic revision has placed many of the species in different genera (Arnold et al. 2007). Darevskia, Iranolacerta, Timon, Apathya and Lacerta are all genera that resulted from the split of the traditional genus Lacerta (Arnold et al. 2007). Currently, two species of the genus Lacerta occur in Iran, Lacerta media Lantz & Cyrén, 1920 and Lacerta strigata Eichwald, 1831 (Šmíd et al. 2014). Ahmadzadeh et al. (2013) suggested that L. media has a western origin from central Anatolia. They showed that L. media belongs to the Lacerta trilineata Bedriaga, 1886 species group (Ahmadzadeh et al. 2013). Lacerta media has a wide distribution range in western Iran Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.2478/s11756-020-00601-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Nastaran Heidari [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of Animal Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
from West and East Azarbaijan provinces to Kermanshah and Lorestan provinces in the south (Sancholi in press). The other species, L. strigata, has a limited distribution range including only the southern coastal region of the Caspian Sea and some parts of the Ardabil province (Šmíd et al. 2014). Ecological niche species concept is a fundamental phenomenon in describing species (Mayr 1999)
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