European Ground Squirrels at the Edge: Current Distribution Status and Anticipated Impact of Climate on Europe’s Southernmost Population (original) (raw)

The European ground squirrel (Spermophilus citellus) is an endangered semifossorial small mammal of grassland/agricultural ecosystems. In the last few decades, the species’ population has declined throughout its range in Europe. The Greek populations represent the southernmost limit of the species’ range and are notably small, scattered, and located mainly in human-modified areas. The goal of the present research is to understand the environmental and anthropogenic variables associated with its distribution in the Mediterranean habitats, assess possible drivers of observed local extinctions, and propose conservation and land-use management actions in light of near-future climate change scenarios. We used presence records since 2000 across all known populations (107 colonies) and maximum entropy conditional probability models (MaxEnt) to calculate both the habitat suitability (bioclimatic variables) and habitat availability (anthropogenic/land-use variables) within the European groun...

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