Journal Article

2013

Koustubh SharmaRaghunandan Singh ChundawatJoanna Van GruisenAsad Rafi Rahmani

Understanding the patchy distribution of four-horned antelope Tetracerus quadricornis in a tropical dry deciduous forest in Central India

At the landscape level, the four-horned antelope is confined to tropical dry deciduous forests and withinthese, their distribution is patchy. Various factors have been proposed as determinants for their patchy distributionwithin landscapes, but none provided an adequate explanation. We hypothesized that availability of a constant supplyof forage influenced the species distribution.We found that the four-horned antelope mainly fed on fruits and flowers,and that a total of 60% of the tree species in Panna Tiger Reserve bore fruits at different times of the year. Hightree species richness in habitat patches was considered a surrogate for constant supply of forage for the four-hornedantelope. Data from 547 sighting locations between 2002 and 2006 and six spatial layers were analysed usingmaximum entropy to produce a probability distribution model for the four-horned antelope in Panna Tiger Reserve.Our model predicted that habitat patches summing up to only 9.5% of the 543 km2 of Panna Tiger Reserve hadhigh probability of distribution (>0.5) of four-horned antelope. Although all variables contributed to the distributionmodel of the four-horned antelope, explanatory power was highest for tree species richness within habitat patches.The distribution of four-horned antelope within tropical dry deciduous forests can be treated as an indicator of hightree diversity and hence habitat quality.

Journal of Tropical Ecology, 1-10. doi:10.1017/S0266467413000722