Predicting the habitat suitability of the Philippine Cockatoo (Cacatua haematuropygia S. Muller) using ecological niche factor analysis

Abstract

Philippine Cockatoo (Cacatua haematuropygia S. Muller) is one of the bird species in the country classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered. Studies proved that the conservation of wildlife species benefits the economy and biodiversity. Hence, developing strategies to further conserve the Philippine Cockatoo is necessary. One decision-support tool for acquiring ecological and evolutionary insights and predicting species distributions across landscapes is the Species Distribution Model (SDM). This study determined how various environmental variables affect the habitat suitability of the Philippine Cockatoo and generated potential habitat suitability maps of this species using the Ecological Niche Factor Analysis (ENFA), an algorithm that only requires presence and background data. Through the values of marginality, specialization, and tolerance obtained after the modeling, it was found that Philippine Cockatoo prefers an environment that is different from the average condition in the country
and lives in a narrow niche. Additionally, the habitat suitability map, which generated optimally suitable habitats for Philippine Cockatoo, is concentrated in some provinces. The five provinces with the highest area of optimal suitable habitat are Palawan, Bohol, Cebu, Negros Oriental, and Siquijor. However, the result could be further improved by adding more occurrence records on Philippine Cockatoo. The findings of this study hold valuable implications for both managers involved in the conservation of the Philippine Cockatoo and future researchers exploring the potential of ENFA for country-wide modeling of Critically Endangered species.