The Flat-tailed Horned Lizard Interagency Coordinating Committee contracted with BioServices at the San Diego Natural History Museum, in partnership with WRA, Inc., to provide a species distributional model for Flat-tailed Horned Lizard, a California Species of Special Concern, and evaluate its potential for presence throughout its range based upon habitat and climate characteristics.
A total of 7,927 occurrence records and 28 environmental layers were used to create the model using the program Maxent, with results exported into ArcGIS. The modeling effort found that land cover variables such as soils appear to be the most important factor determining potentially suitable habitat, but climate variables including temperature gradients and precipitation were also influential predictors.
This model can be used to locate habitat corridors between populations, identify potentially suitable habitat which has not been previously sampled, or provide areas to focus for research at a finer scale.
