Distribution modelling of Chrysophyllum albidum G. Don. in South-West Nigeria
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Date
2012-12-10
Authors
Lyam, P.T.
Adeyemi, T.O.
Ogundipe, O.T.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
academyjournals.net
Abstract
Modeling studies were carried out on Chrysophyllum albidum, an important economic species in Nigeria. This study attempts to estimate the occurrence, and at the same time investigate the major climatic factors responsible for the geographical distribution of the species in South-West part of the country using Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) program. A total of 43 geo-referenced records of C. albidum were assembled from various locations and climatic data were acquired from the Worldclim Database. The main variables that contributed towards predicting the species distribution were temperature seasonality, minimum temperature of coldest month and mean temperature of driest quarter. Results suggest that the distribution model was excellent with training AUC value of 0.999 and test AUC value of 1.000 confirming the wide distribution of C. albidum in South-West Nigeria. The testing models correctly predicted most of the test locations in all models and standard deviation is 0.000. In addition, the model indicated that the presence of C. albidum was mainly associated with minimum temperature of the coldest month (55.6%) and precipitation of the coldest quarter (18.6%). Recommendations for different conservation strategies include in situ conservation in Protected Areas; ex situ conservation in DNA banks; and conservation through ‘sustainable utilization’.
Description
Keywords
Environmental variables, Maxent, Species distribution
Citation
Lyam, P.T., Adeyemi, T.O. and Ogundipe, O.T. (2012). Distribution modelling of Chrysophyllum albidum G. Don. in South-West Nigeria. Journal of Natural and Environmental Sciences 3(2): 7-14