Species Distribution and Habitat Connectivity in Conservation Science

Species distribution and habitat connectivity are fundamental concepts in conservation science, addressing where species occur and how they move among habitat patches. Distribution analyses examine the environmental and anthropogenic factors—such as climate variables, land cover, topography and human footprint—that shape the suitability of locations for particular species. Connectivity assessment evaluates the degree to which landscapes facilitate or impede movement, dispersal and gene flow, using representations of resistance to travel. Recent technological and methodological advances—spanning remote sensing, spatial statistics, landscape genetics and circuit theory—have improved our ability to map core areas, predict dispersal routes and identify bottlenecks. By integrating species distribution models with connectivity frameworks, conservation planners can prioritise protected area design, restore degraded corridors and anticipate range shifts in response to climate change. This interdisciplinary approach is critical for maintaining biodiversity, sustaining ecosystem services and informing evidence-based management at local, regional and global scales.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have employed integrated modelling to evaluate habitat integrity and connectivity at national scales. One investigation mapped terrestrial biomes using ecosystem-service tools and land-cover data to quantify human-induced degradation across desert, forest and grassland ecosystems, revealing that roads and agricultural expansion pose the greatest fragmentation risk and identifying high-priority biomes for conservation action. A separate study combined species distribution modelling with connectivity analysis to delineate core habitat patches and corridor networks for a large carnivore in mountainous regions, demonstrating that existing protected areas capture only a fraction of functional linkages and that dispersal thresholds critically influence landscape fragmentation patterns.

Species Distribution and Habitat Connectivity in Conservation Science publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in species distribution and habitat connectivity in conservation science across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Species distribution model (SDM): A statistical or machine-learning framework that predicts the geographic occurrence of a species based on environmental and occurrence data.

Resistance surface: A spatial grid assigning movement costs to landscape features, indicating how landscape heterogeneity impedes or facilitates movement.

Circuit theory: An approach to connectivity modelling that treats landscapes as electrical circuits to estimate flow of organisms between habitat patches.

Least cost path: The route between two habitat patches that minimises cumulative movement cost according to a resistance surface.

Ensemble modelling: A method combining multiple predictive algorithms to improve accuracy and robustness of species distribution forecasts.

References

1. Ecological assessment of Iran’s terrestrial biomes for wildlife conservation. Scientific Reports (2023).
2. Prioritizing core areas, corridors and conflict hotspots for lion conservation in southern Africa. PLOS ONE (2018).
3. Effects of climate change on habitat and connectivity for populations of a vulnerable, endemic salamander in Iran. Global Ecology and Conservation (2019).
4. Mapping connectivity and conflict risk to identify safe corridors for the Persian leopard. Landscape Ecology (2020).
5. Identifying priority core habitats and corridors for effective conservation of brown bears in Iran. Scientific Reports (2021).