High quality, granular, timely, trustworthy, and efficient vertebrate species distribution data across a 30,000 km2 protected area complex

Ji, Yinqiu, Diana, Alex, Li, Xueyou, Matechou, Eleni, Griffin, Jim E., Liu, Shuwei, Luo, Mingjie, Wu, Chunying, Bai, Ru, Yao, Chenyang, Yin, Tingting, Dong, Feng, Wu, Fei, Wang, Kai, Yu, Zhongbin, Chen, Xiaoyong, Jiang, Xuelong, Che, Jing, Yu, Douglas W. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8551-5609 and Popescu, Viorel D. (2025) High quality, granular, timely, trustworthy, and efficient vertebrate species distribution data across a 30,000 km2 protected area complex. Ecology Letters, 28 (12). ISSN 1461-023X

Preview	PDF (Ecology Letters - 2026 - Ji - High Quality Granular Timely Trustworthy and Efficient Vertebrate Species Distribution) - Published Version Available under License Unspecified licence. Download (3MB) | Preview
	Microsoft Word (Yu_rba08-09-01-2026-115336) - Accepted Version Available under License Unspecified licence. Download (2MB)

Abstract

The routine generation of species distribution data at scale remains a challenge. We used aquatic environmental DNA metabarcoding to sample vertebrate species across the 30,000 km2 Gaoligongshan region along the China-Myanmar border. In just 56 calendar days (33 researcher-field-days + 69 researcher-lab-days), we detected 389 vertebrate species, of which 35 are Red-Listed. We introduce the ‘eDNA-aware’ OccPlus occupancy model, which accounts for false-negative and false-positive error in the field and lab. OccPlus leverages the taxonomic breadth of eDNA datasets by using ordination to estimate species occupancies. We recover known biogeographic patterns and find that native terrestrial and fish species have higher occupancies inside protected areas while domesticated species and non-native fishes have higher occupancies outside them. Our study demonstrates how eDNA metabarcoding can obtain high-quality, granular, timely, trustworthy, and efficient species distribution data to facilitate nature conservation and restoration.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability Statement: R Code, data and outputs for all occupancy analyses implemented in this manuscript are available via GitHub public repository: https://github. com/ dvpop escu/ Gaoli gongs han- eDNA; archived on Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17113196; Bioinformatic pipelines for creating the OTU table (http:// github. com/ jiyin qiu/ 2023G LG_ eDNA_ method_ code; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17098000) and for Protax taxonomic assignment of the OTUs (https:// github. com/ jiyin qiu/ screenforb io- mbc- 23GLG ; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17098053) are available via GitHub public repositories and have been archived on Zenodo. Sequence data are uploaded to NCBI SRA under BioProject ID PRJNA1231792.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	biodiversity conservation,china,environmental dna,gaoligongshan,kunming–montreal global biodiversity framework,monitoring,myanmar,observation error,occupancy modelling,vertebrates,ecology, evolution, behavior and systematics,sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1105
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	09 Jan 2026 15:30
Last Modified:	18 Aug 2026 10:22
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101577
DOI:	10.22541/au.174412107.76832286/v1

Downloads

Actions (login required)

View Item