PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Christopher CM Baker
AU  - Yinqiu Ji
AU  - Viorel D Popescu
AU  - Jiaxin Wang
AU  - Chunying Wu
AU  - Zhengyang Wang
AU  - Yuanheng Li
AU  - Lin Wang
AU  - Chaolang Hua
AU  - Zhongxing Yang
AU  - Chunyan Yang
AU  - Charles CY Xu
AU  - Alex Diana
AU  - Qingzhong Wen
AU  - Naomi E Pierce
AU  - Douglas W Yu
TI  - Measuring protected-area outcomes with leech iDNA: large-scale quantification of vertebrate biodiversity in Ailaoshan nature reserve
AID  - 10.1101/2020.02.10.941336
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.02.10.941336
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/31/2020.02.10.941336.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/31/2020.02.10.941336.full
AB  - Protected areas are central to meeting biodiversity conservation goals, but measuring their effectiveness is challenging. We address this challenge by using DNA from leech-ingested bloodmeals to estimate vertebrate occupancies across the 677 km2 Ailaoshan reserve in Yunnan, China. 163 park rangers collected 30,468 leeches from 172 patrol areas. We identified 86 vertebrate species, including amphibians, mammals, birds, and squamates. Multi-species occupancy modelling showed that species richness increased with elevation and distance to reserve edge, including the distributions of most of the large mammals (e.g. sambar, black bear, serow, tufted deer). The exceptions were the three domestic mammal species (cows, sheep, goats) and muntjak deer, which were more common at lower elevations. eDNA-estimated vertebrate occupancies are Granular, Repeatable, Auditable, Direct, Efficient, and Simple-to-understand measures that can be used to assess conservation effectiveness and thus to improve the contributions that protected areas make to achieving global biodiversity goals.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.