Protected areas coverage for suitable habitats of Garra persica, an endemic fish in Iranian inland waters

Protected areas are powerful tools for conservation of biodiversity because they can reduce negative effects of anthropogenic activities on biodiversity. Close to 15% ofthe Earth s land surface covered by protected area. Evaluating the effectiveness of current protected areas in conservation of biodiversity is one of the most important tasks of conservation biologists. Species distribution models (SDMs) are frequently used for assessing effectiveness of current protected areas for conservation of biodiversity. In this research, we applied variables related to climate (Downloaded from WorldClim) and topography (Obtained for the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation model) and developed a habitat suitability model for Garra persica using Maxent model. Then, the area of suitable habitats inside protected areas calculated using the raster package in R software. Model performance was assessed using the Area Under the Curve (AUC) metric of the Receiving Operator Characteristic (ROC) curve. The ROC plot was created by selecting 75% of the data for training and 25% for testing. The model performed well, with an Area Under the Curve (AUC) metric of 0.93 for training and 0.92 for test data. We found that only 10 percent of suitable habitats of Garra persica are covered by Iran’s protected areas. We suggest that Iran’s current protected areas are not effectiveenough to ensure the species long term survival. Considering this fish is an endemic species, it is necessary to develop new protected areas across the species distributionrange.