bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.28.066548; this version posted April 30, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Elephant Landscapes 2020 The Past, Present and Future of Elephant Landscapes in Asia Shermin de Silva1,2*, Tiffany Wu3, Alison Thieme1,9, Josiah Johnson3, Philip Nyhus3, Jamie Wadey4, Thinh Vu5, Alexander Mossbrucker6, Thy Neang7, Becky Shu Chen8, Melissa Songer1, Peter Leimgruber1 1Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Conservation Ecology Center, National Zoological Park, 1500 Remount Road, Front Royal, VA 22630 2Trunks & Leaves Inc., 391 Walnut Street, Unit 3, Newtonville MA 02460 (current address) 3Environmental Studies Program, Colby College 4Management and Ecology of Malaysian Elephants, University of Nottingham, Malaysia 5Department of Wildlife, Vietnam National University of Forestry 6Frankfurt Zoological Society 7Wild Earth Allies 8Zoological Society of London 9University of Maryland *Corresponding author:
[email protected] 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.28.066548; this version posted April 30, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Elephant Landscapes 2020 Abstract Habitat loss is a leading cause of species declines worldwide (1, 2). Using the Land Use Harmonization dataset (3) as the basis for ecological niche modelling, we quantify modelled changes in global suitable habitat over the past three centuries for Asian elephants, a megaherbivore representing diverse biomes.