Habitat connectivity for endangered Indochinese tigers in Thailand

Habitat connectivity is crucial for the conservation of species restricted to fragmented populations within human-dominated landscapes. However, identifying habitat connectivity for apex predators is challenging because trophic interactions between primary productivity and prey species influence both the distribution of habitats, and predator movement. Our goal was to assess habitat connectivity for Indochinese tigers (Panthera tigris) in Thailand. We quantified suitable habitat and dispersal corridors based an ensemble species distribution model that included prey distributions, primary productivity, and abiotic variables and was based on camera-trap data from 1996 to 2013 in 15 protected areas. We employed graph theory to evaluate the relative importance of habitat patches and dispersal corridors to the overall connectivity network. We found that tiger occurrence models with and without prey distributions performed well (Area Under the Curve: 0.932–0.954). However, inclusion of prey distributions significantly improved model performance (P