Meeting Abstract
With the growth of urbanization and an increase in agricultural development, the survival of some species has been threatened, in particularly species with low dispersal ability and high sensitivity to environmental changes. The Rhacophorus arvlis, an amphibian endemic to Taiwan is currently listed as Endangered under IUCN’s red list. It prefers certain kinds of farmland such as bamboos as habitats. In recent years, the conversion of agricultural land-use such as from bamboo plantation to pineapple fields has increased, which might have negative effects on R. arvalis. The study aims to understand the effect of land-use change between 2006 and 2014 on the distribution and population R. arvalis of in Chiayi area, Taiwan. We used audio strip transects to locate the frogs in 2006 and 2014. The suitable habitat range in both years were predicted by the Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model using land-use types and the distance from the river as the inputs of environmental factors. The land-use types include forest, grass, field, dry land, building and water. The result shows that the R. arvalis preferred forest habitat but avoided dry land and building. The total area of forest, however, had reduced. The suitable habitat for frogs accounted for 48.8% of total area surveyed in 2006 and 44.7% in 2014. The conversion of land-use not only caused the loss of habitat but also increased the isolation among frog populations. There is an urgent need to reduce the loss of habitat as well as increase the connectivity among habitats.
