Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on the Distribution of the Annamite Striped Rabbit (Nesolagus timminsi)
Main Article Content
Abstract
The Annamite striped rabbit (Nesolagus timminsi) is an endangered lagomorph, formally described in the early 2000s and found only in Vietnam and Laos. Although it is a recently discovered mammal, its populations have already been significantly reduced across most of its key habitats due to illegal hunting and habitat destruction. Climate change impacts, which have been considered an emerging threat to threatened mammals in Vietnam, on the Annamite striped rabbit have not been fully assessed. In this study, we employed MaxEnt, a widely used species distribution modeling method, to predict changes in the distribution range of N. timminsi in the future using a range of different climate change scenarios. Our prediction results showed that in most climate change scenarios and timeframes, the rabbits may face significant habitat loss, up to 68.73%, and fragmentation in its currently important distribution ranges. In such cases, the climatically stable regions that distribute along the border between Vietnam and Laos can serve as the “refugia” for the species. We suggest those regions being the focus of the rabbits’ conservation effort in the future, and cooperation between Vietnam and Laos’ government agencies and conservation organizations will be crucial in securing the remaining habitat of this endangered small mammal.
Keywords:
Maxent, Annamite striped rabbit, Climate change, Distribution.
References
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A. Tilker, Camera-Trapping Reveals Both Defaunation and Conservation Priority Species in an Unprotected Forest in Vietnam, Global Ecology and Conservation, Vol. 61, 2025, pp. 1-8 e03644, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2025.e03644.
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[3] A. Tilker, A. Nguyen, J. F. Abrams, T. Bhagwat, M. Le, T. V. Nguyen, A. T. Nguyen, J. Niedballa, R. Sollmann, A. Wilting, A Little-Known Endemic Caught in the South-East Asian Extinction Crisis: The Annamite Striped Rabbit Nesolagus timminsi, Oryx, Vol. 54, 2020, pp. 178-187, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605318000534.
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[6] A. Nguyen, A. Tilker, D. Le, H. V. Le, S. V. Le, T. H. Luu, B. V. Tran, & A. Wilting, New Records and Southern Range Extension of the Annamite Striped Rabbit Nesolagus timminsi in Vietnam, Mammalia, Vol. 85, 2021, pp. 417-421, https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2020-0189.
[7] A. T. Nguyen, A. Tilker, Q. Le, M. Le, New Records of the Annamite Striped Rabbit in Ngoc Linh, Quang Nam and Kon Tum Provinces, Vietnam, Mammalia, Vol. 87, 2023, pp. 374- 378, https://doi.org/10.1515/mammalia-2023-0005.
[8] G. T. Pecl, M. B. Araújo, J. D. Bell, J. Blanchard, T. C. Bonebrake, I. C. Chen, T. D. Clark, R. K. Colwell, F. Danielsen, B. Evengård, L. Falconi,
S. Ferrier, S. Frusher, R. A. Garcia, R. B. Griffis, A. J. Hobday, C. J. Scheepers, M. A. Jarzyna,
S. Jennings, J. Lenoir, H. I. Linnetved, V. Y. Martin, P. C. McCormack, J. McDonald, N. J. Mitchell, T. Mustonen, J. M. Pandolfi, N. Pettorelli, E. Popova, S. A. Robinson, B. R. Scheffers, J. D. Shaw, C. J. B. Sorte, J. M. Strugnell, J. M. Sunday, M. N. Tuanmu, A. Vergés, C. Villanueva, T. Wernberg, E. Wapstra, S. E. Williams, Biodiversity Redistribution under Climate Change: Impacts on Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, Science,
Vol. 355, 2017,
pp. 1-9, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aai9214.
[9] N. U. Cardona, M. Blair, M. Londoño, R. Loyola, J. V. Tibatá, H. M. Devia, Species Distribution Modeling in Latin America: A 25-Year Retrospective Review, Tropical Conservation Science, Vol. 12, 2019, pp. 1-19, https://doi.org/10.1177/1940082919854058.
[10] J. Elith, S. J. Phillips, T. Hastie, M. Dudík, Y. E. Chee, C. J. Yates, A Statistical Explanation of Maxent for Ecologists, Diversity and Distributions, Vol. 17, 2011, pp. 43-57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14724642.2010.00725.x.
[11] T. A. Nguyen, C. T. H. Nhung, P. J. Galante,
M. Le, Rapid Decline and Fragmentation of the Distribution of An Enigmatic Small Carnivore, the Owston’s Civet, in Response to Future Climate Change, Frontiers of Biogeography, Vol. 14, 2022, pp. 1-12, https://doi.org/10.21425/F5FBG53201.
[12] N. N. Bett, M. E. Blair, E. J. Sterling, Ecological Niche Conservatism in Doucs (Genus Pygathrix), International Journal of Primatology, Vol. 33, 2012, pp. 972-988, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-012-9622-3.
[13] T. V. Nguyen, H. Man, A. Nguyen, An Assessment of Potential Distribution and Climate Change Impacts on a Critically Endangered Primate, the Delacour’s Langur, the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, Vol. 70, 2022, pp. 30-38, https://doi.org/10.26107/RBZ-2022-0003.
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[15] A. T. Nguyen, M. Le, A. Tilker, First Record of a Mixed Species Association between Hatinh Langur (Trachypithecus hatinhensis) and Red‐Shanked Douc (Pygathrix nemaeus), Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 14, 2024, pp. 1-6, https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70122.
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[17] R. G. Pearson, C. J. Raxworthy, M. Nakamura,
A. T. Peterson, Predicting Species Distributions from Small Numbers of Occurrence Records: A Test Case Using Cryptic Geckos in Madagascar, Journal of Biogeography, Vol. 34, 2007, pp. 102-117, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01594.x.
[18] S. E. Fick, R. J. Hijmans, WorldClim 2: New 1-Km Spatial Resolution Climate Surfaces for Global Land Areas, International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 3, 2017, pp. 430-4315, https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5086.
[19] R. P. Anderson, A. Raza, The Effect of the Extent of The the Study Region on GIS Models of Species Geographic Distributions and Estimates of Niche Evolution: Preliminary Tests with Montane Rodents (Genus Nephelomys) in Venezuela, Journal of Biogeography, Vol. 37, 2010,
pp. 1378-1393, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02290.x.
[20] S. Phillips, R. Anderson, M. Dudík, R. Schapire, M. Blair, Opening the Black Box: An Open-Source Release of Maxent, Ecography, Vol. 40, 2017,
pp. 887-893, https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.03049.
[21] J. M. Kass, R. Muscarella, P. J. Galante, C. L. Bohl, G. E. P. Buitrago, R. A. Boria, M. S. Guardia, R. P. Anderson, ENMeval 2.0: Redesigned for Customizable and Reproducible Modeling of Species Niches and Distributions, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 12, 2021, pp. 1602-1608, https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13628.
[22] K. Riahi, D. P. V. Vuuren, E. Kriegler, J. Edmonds, B. C. O’Neill, S. Fujimori, N. Bauer, K. Calvin,
R. Dellink, O. Fricko, W. Lutz, A. Popp, J. C. Cuaresma, S. Kumar, M. Leimbach, L. Jiang,
T. Kram, S. Rao, J. Emmerling, K. Ebi, T. Hasegawa, P. Havlik, F. Humpenöder, L. A. Da Silva, S. Smith, E. Stehfest, V. Bosetti, J. Eom,
D. Gernaat, T. Masui, J. Rogelj, J. Strefler, L. Drouet, V. Krey, G. Luderer, M. Harmsen, K. Takahashi, L. Baumstark, J. C. Doelman, M. Kainuma, Z. Klimont, G. Marangoni, H. L. Campen, M. Obersteiner, A. Tabeau, M. Tavoni, The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Their Energy, Land Use, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Implications: an Overview, Global Environmental Change,
Vol. 42, 2017, pp. 153-168, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.05.009.
[23] M. B. Araujo, M. New, Ensemble Forecasting of Species Distributions, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Vol. 22, 2007, pp. 4-47, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2006.09.010.
[24] A. T. Nguyen, A. Nguyen, M. Le, A. Wilting,
A. Tilker, Camera-Trapping Reveals Both Defaunation and Conservation Priority Species in an Unprotected Forest in Vietnam, Global Ecology and Conservation, Vol. 61, 2025, pp. 1-8 e03644, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2025.e03644.