Land use preferences and distribution of Pelophylax spp. in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Berina Vrhovac

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Thesis topic "Land Use Preferences and Distribution of Pelophylax spp. in Bosnia and Herzegovina," aimed to identify the preferred habitats of Pelophylax kurtmuelleri, Pelophylax ridibundus, and their hybrids and develop a model to predict their occurrence based on land use type in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Pelophylax spp. individuals were collected between 2018 and 2019 and molecularly identified in Vrhovac et al., 2020. Data on the composition of Corine Land Cover types across 18 research locations within a buffer zone were obtained using ArcGIS software. R Software was used to analyse preferred habitats of P. kurtmuelleri, P. ridibundus and their hybrids, as well as predicting the occurrence of chosen taxon’s based on land use type data for Bosnia and Herzegovina and the kernel density map of samples occurrences. The study found that a large-scale analysis of land use preferences did not have strong statistically significant differences between the selected taxa and land use type. It was suggested that future studies should analyze data on a smaller scale of land use and with an increased amount of samples for each taxon. However, the hybrid of P. ridibundus and P. kurtmulleri, as well as P. kurtmulleri, have shown a degree of superiority in comparison to P. ridibundus, based on their distribution, diversity, and preference of the CLC types they have been identified on. These findings may contribute as insight to further research on the genetic and ecological aspects of Pelophylax species, potentially leading to a better understanding of their complex nature.

Keywords

land use prefereces, Pelophylax spp., Bosnia and Herzegovina, statistical analysis, R, ArcGIS, conservation planning, distribution

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 26. 4. 2023

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 15. 5. 2023
• Supervisor: doc. Mgr. Oldřich Kopecký, Ph.D.
• Reader: Chandani Verma

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources

Master programme:
Natural Resources Management and Ecological Engineering