Distribution and extent of suitable habitats of Ruspoli’s Turaco (Tauraco ruspolii) and White-cheeked Turaco (Tauraco leucotis) under a changing climate in Ethiopia

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Understanding the distribution pattern of species and their suitable habitat is key to focus conservation efforts. Climate change has had notable impact on the distribution and extent of suitable habitats, and the long-term survival of various species. We aim to determine the distribution and extent of suitable habitats for Tauraco ruspolii and T. leucotis in Ethiopia and predict their range in the 2050s and 2070s using MaxEnt algorithm. We used 25 and 29 rarified occurrence points for T. ruspolii and T. leucotis, respectively, and 13 environmental variables. Three regularization multipliers and two cut-off thresholds were used to map the potential suitable habitats for each species under current and future climates. Maps were assembled from these techniques to produce final composite tertiary maps and investigated the habitat suitability overlap between the two species using the UNION tool in the geographical information system.