Habitat Overlap of Persian leopard, ‎Wild Sheep and Wild Goat in Iran

Persian Leopard is the most prominent mammals in Iran, where most of its distribution is known to be in this country. Dispersion of this species depends on anthropological and climatical factors. Studying its habitat as a keystone species is really important because it has effects on the functions of the ecosystem. With this all said, conservation measures are crucial for this species.  Based on the previous studies, despite the wide range of Iranian leopard diet, factors such as land use change has reduced its prey in many areas. Nowadays new habitat modelling methods play an important role in wildlife management and conservation. One of these methods is the MaxEnt approach. In this study, using this method and using variables of land cover, topographic, climatic and human-made, modeling to predict suitable habitats of Persian Leopard, Wild Goat, Urial Wild Sheep and Armenian Wild Sheep were performed as their favorite preys. Based on the model evaluation results by using Jackknife index and response curves showed that Persian Leopard, Wild Goat, Urial Wild Sheep and Armenian Wild Sheep have shown significant responses to the distance of protected areas. It also showed that taking distance from protected areas to reduce habitat suitabilities for the studied species. Also, Persian leopard habitats have significant overlaps with its 3 favourite prey. This shows the importance of wild goats, Urial and Armenian wild sheep in Persian leopard habitats.