Suitable habitats shifting toward human-dominated landscapes of Asian elephants in China

Tropical forests are undergoing land use change in many regions of the world, with an increasingly prominent trend of landscape fragmentation. Nevertheless, the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) population in tropical forests of China has continued to increase, and their distribution range is expanding to human-modified landscapes, resulting in increased severe human-elephant conflicts. Little is known about the habitat adaptation strategies of Asian elephants in human-dominated habitats. Here, we applied maximum entropy modeling to extensive occurrence data (21,011 independent records) of Asian elephants in southwest China to explore temporal changes in their distribution under climate change. We also identified critical factors shaping their current distribution and habitat selection strategies concerning human-induced land-use changes at multiple spatial scales. We found that the area of suitable habitats for Asian elephants will slightly increase in the future (7,025 km2) compared with the present climatic scenario (6,468 km2). At a finer spatial scale, topographic variables such as elevation (74%) and slope (11%) are the dominant factors shaping the habitat selection of Asian elephants. However, at a larger spatial scale, anthropogenic variables are the main factors associated with the habitat preference of Asian elephants. Most suitable and sub-suitable habitats (65%) of Asian elephants overlap with human-dominated areas. Our findings suggest that the effects of human activity on Asian elephants are scale-dependent and demonstrate that the suitable habitats of Asian elephants in China are shifting to human-dominated regions.