DOI: 10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vtm8
title: Data from: Distribution and protection of ecological specialists in Chinese terrestrial mammals

description: Aim: Specialist species are characterized as species with a narrow niche
 and, thus, vulnerable to environmental changes and disturbance.
 Understanding the distribution of specialists is important for developing
 proactive conservation strategies. Although China is among the countries
 with the highest diversity of mammals, no previous studies have explored
 the distribution and conservation status of specialists in Chinese
 mammals. Location: China. Time period: Present day. Taxa studied: Chinese
 terrestrial mammals. Methods: We assessed the distribution of three types
 of specialization in Chinese terrestrial mammals: diet specialist, habitat
 specialist, and extreme specialist (i.e., species that are both diet and
 habitat specialist). We adopted generalized linear models to test whether
 some landscape-level factors explain the variation of each type of
 specialization richness. Gap analyses were conducted to assess the
 conservation status of the specialists identified. Results: From a total
 of 621 mammal species, 327 species were identified as specialists,
 including 237, 137, and 48 species categorized as diet specialists,
 habitat specialists, and extreme specialists, respectively. The mountains
 in southwest China have the highest diversity of specialized terrestrial
 mammals in China, regardless of the type of specialization. After
 controlling for the effect of overall species richness, other hotspots
 held more specialist species than expected from the overall species
 richness (e.g., the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, the Junggar basin, Liaoning,
 and Guangdong). High-altitude areas tended to possess more diet and
 habitat specialist species. Elevation range and habitat diversity were
 positively related to diet specialist richness but negatively related to
 habitat specialist richness. Only 42 (12.84%) of the 327 specialist
 species were adequately covered by the current protected areas. Main
 conclusions: We have identified multiple hotspots of ecological
 specialization in terrestrial mammals in China. The role of landscape
 factors in shaping specialist richness was inconsistent among different
 types of specialization. We also found a serious spatial mismatch between
 specialization and current conservation efforts.
description: <em>1 Distribution of terrestrial mammals and protected
 areas</em>     Using ArcGIS v. 10.2 (ESRI, 2013),
 we generated a 50 × 50 km2 grid over China and then overlaid the polygon
 shape files (downloaded from www.iucnredlist.org) representing the distribution of terrestrial mammals. This procedure resulted in 621 terrestrial mammals entirely or partly distributed in China. We obtained the spatial data of worldwide protected areas from the World Database on Protected Areas (www.protectedplanet.net). We then overlaid the polygons of protected areas with the 50 × 50 km2 grid over China and calculated the area of protected areas included in each 2500 km2 cell. <em>2 Mapping diet and habitat specialization in Chinese terrestrial mammals</em>     For each of these species, we obtained diet information from the EltonTraits database (Wilman et al., 2014). This database used semi-quantitative information (scores from literature based on word order in sentences describing the diet) to achieve the diet composition of each species, represented by percentages of 10 major food types (invertebrates, vertebrates: endotherm, vertebrates: ectotherm, vertebrates: fish, vertebrates: unknown, scavenger, frugivore, nectarivore, granivore, folivore). Information on habitat breadth was collected from a recently published database on Chinese mammals' morphology, life history, and ecology (Ding et al., 2022). The dataset classifies habitats using the IUCN habitat classification scheme, which identifies 14 major types of habitats: forest, shrubland, grassland, artificial/terrestrial, caves and subterranean habitats (non-aquatic), rocky areas, savanna, semi-desert, desert, wetlands (inland), marine coastal/supratidal, marine intertidal, and marine oceanic.     A species was identified as a diet specialist if its diet only includes one type of food or a habitat specialist if it only uses one type of major habitat. If a species was both a diet specialist and a habitat specialist, we identified it as an extreme specialist. However, we had to exclude 61 species from this categorization due to a lack of information on their resource utilization. As a result, 560 terrestrial mammals were retained in our formal analyses on specialization. <em>3 Mapping environmental factors</em>     Our study included four environmental factors: mean elevation, elevation range, habitat diversity, and dominant habitat. Based on the grid data of the digital elevation model (with a spatial resolution of 500 m) provided by the Data Center for Resources and Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (RESDC, www.resdc.cn), we used ArcGIS v 10.2 to calculate the mean elevation and elevation range within each 50 × 50 km2 cell.     We obtained China's original land use data in 2020 (with a spatial resolution of 1 km) from RESDC. This dataset was derived from Landsat satellite data with a spatial resolution of 30 m, and the land use of each 1 km2 pixel was categorized as one of the six major types of habitats (agricultural land, forest, grassland, water, urban and unused land such as desert). Using ArcGIS v 10.2, we calculated the percentage of each major habitat type within each cell. Subsequently, we calculated the Shannon-Wiener diversity index for each cell to assess the habitat diversity using the formula , where Pi represented the percentage of the ith type of habitat within a cell. The dominant habitat type was defined as the habitat type with the highest percentage within each cell.
description: # Distribution and protection of ecological specialists in Chinese
 terrestrial mammals
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vtm8](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vtm8) ## Description of the data and file structure ### Files and variables #### File: GridData.xlsx **Description:** This table indicates the species richness of each type of specialist and the values of landscape factors per cell. ##### Variables * TargetFID: ID of each cell. * Richness: number of terrestrial mammal species within each cell. * DietSpecialistRichness: number of diet specialist species within each cell. * HabitatSpecialistRichness: number of habitat specialist species within each cell. * ExtremeSpecialistRichness: number of extreme specialist species within each cell. * DominantHabitat: dominant habitat type within each cell. * HabitatDiversity: denoted by Shannon-Wiener Index. * Elevation: mean elevation within each cell. * ELevationRange: range of elevation within each cell. * ProtectedArea: size of protected area within each cell. * StrictlyProtectedArea: size of strictly protected area (Nature Reserve Ia according to IUCN) within each cell. * Longitude: longitude of centroid within each cell. * Latitude: latitude of centroid within each cell. ## Code/software Microsoft Excel can be used to view the file.