Suitable Habitats of <i>Chrysolophus</i> spp. Need Urgent Protection from Habitat Fragmentation in China: Especially Suitable Habitats in Non-Nature Reserve Areas

Over the past few years, the wild population of <i>Chrysolophus</i> spp. has decreased remarkably. Habitat fragmentation is a significant cause for this serious threat to the survival of <i>Chrysolophus</i> spp. population. In order to further understand the distribution of potentially suitable habitats of <i>Chrysolophus</i> spp., we used the maximum entropy model to predict the potentially suitable habitats of <i>C. pictus</i> and <i>C. amherstiae</i> in China based on the known distribution. According to the prediction results of the model, we calculated the landscape pattern index to compare the fragmentation of the two species’ potential suitable habitats in nature reserves and non-nature reserves. The results showed that the potentially suitable habitat for <i>Chrysolophus</i> spp. only accounted for a small area of China. The suitable habitats for <i>C. pictus</i> were mainly in Sichuan, Shaanxi, Hubei, and other provinces, and the model predicts a total area of 359,053.06 km². In addition, the suitable habitats for <i>C. amherstiae</i> were mainly distributed in the three-parallel-river area, with a potential total area of 215,569.83 km². The model also showed that there was an overlap of suitable habitats between the two species in the western edge of the Sichuan Basin. Previously, hybrids of the two pheasants have already been found in this same overlapping area predicted by the model. The landscape pattern index showed that in the potentially suitable habitat for <i>Chrysolophus</i> spp., the fragmentation of non-nature reserve areas was higher than that of nature reserve areas. The results revealed the distribution of potentially suitable habitats for <i>Chrysolophus</i> spp. in China and highlighted that the suitable habitats in non-nature reserve areas were in urgent need of conservation, thereby providing a key reference for the conservation of the <i>Chrysolophus</i> spp. population in the future.