Habitat-Suitability Model for the Yellow Rail (Coturnicops noveboracensis) in the Northern Gulf Coast of Alabama and Mississippi, USA.

The yellow rail (Coturnicops noveboracensis) is a migratory bird of high conservation priority throughout its range and winters across the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains regions of the southeastern United States. Although the winter ecology of this species has been recently explored, no studies have addressed their distribution and abundance in relation to suitable habitat capable of supporting this species during winter along the northern Gulf Coast of Alabama and Mississippi. The objectives of this study were to develop a habitat-suitability model for yellow rail wintering in the northern Gulf Coast of Alabama and Mississippi. We then used this model to evaluate the distribution of habitat suitable for supporting yellow rail in this geographic area. Using a multivariate approach that makes use of presence-only data through a maximum entropy framework we compared the distribution of where the focal species was observed to a reference set of the whole study area. Of the 784,657 ha over which our model was applied, only 1% (8643 ha) of this area was predicted suitable in its present condition, for supporting yellow rail in winter. Our analysis indicates that the yellow rail along the northern Gulf Coast of Alabama and Mississippi occupy a very narrow range of environmental conditions highlighting need for specific management actions to maintain and conserve suitable winter landscapes for this habitat-restricted species.