10.6084/m9.figshare.6061289.v1 Rosa M. Chefaoui Rosa M. Chefaoui Mahboubeh Sadat Hosseinzadeh Mahboubeh Sadat Hosseinzadeh Meysam Mashayekhi Meysam Mashayekhi Barbod Safaei-Mahroo Barbod Safaei-Mahroo Seyed Mahdi Kazemi Seyed Mahdi Kazemi Identifying suitable habitats and current conservation status of a rare and elusive reptile in Iran: Supplementary Material Brill Online 2018 ecological niche modelling endemic Hierophis Iranian Plateau small sample size, snake snake Biogeography and Phylogeography Ecology not elsewhere classified Vertebrate Biology 2018-03-29 06:59:31 Journal contribution https://brill.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Identifying_suitable_habitats_and_current_conservation_status_of_a_rare_and_elusive_reptile_in_Iran_Supplementary_Material/6061289 <p>Knowledge gaps regarding species distribution and abundance are great in remote regions with political instability, and they might be even larger concerning elusive and rare species. We predict the potential distribution for <i>Hierophis andreanus,</i> a poorly known endemic snake in the Iranian Plateau, and assess its conservation status in relation to existing protected areas. We used a maximum entropy modeling tool and Mahalanobis distance to produce an ensemble species distribution model. The most suitable habitats where located mainly in mountain ranges and adjacent areas of Iran and Afghanistan. Mean temperature and slope were the most important predictors for our models. Furthermore, just five localities for <i>H. andreanus</i> were inside the Iranian protected areas. A 10 km expansion from existing boundaries of protected areas in all directions would double protected localities to 10, and a 20 km buffer would result in 13 protected localities. Our findings are particularly valuable to select locations to conduct new surveys and produce a more reliable estimate of current population size to improve conservation and management for this reptile in the Irano-Anatolian region.</p>