Distribution and habitat suitability of two neighboring Lycian salamanders

Abstract

Lyciasalamandra fazilae and Lyciasalamandra flavimembris are two Endangered and endemic species which occur only in Mugla province of Turkey. In protecting an endemic or endangered species, the first step is to understand its potential and/or known distribution. Therefore, we used the Maximum Entropy modelling software (MaxEnt) to analyze the current potential distribution and most important habitat features associated with the localities of these two species. The variables with the highest contributions to the model were: Bedrock, Precipitation of Coldest Quarter, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index for L. flavimembris; and Bedrock, Temperature Seasonality, Precipitation Seasonality, and Precipitation of Coldest Quarter for L. fazilae. We also identified two new localities for L. flavimembris using the habitat suitability model.