2025 Volume 81 Issue 16 Article ID: 24-16123
In this study, we estimated the habitat potential of multiple fish species in the Takatsu Basin using the MaxEnt model based on the presence information of fishes revealed by environmental DNA analysis. As a result, the AUC was more than 0.7 for all fish species that were selected for analysis, demonstrating that the constructed models were useful for estimating the distribution of target species. The results also revealed that the habitat potential of most fish species was strongly affected by the riverbed gradient and flow rate in the subwatersheds. On the other hand, the importance of river water temperature and land use was lower than that of riverbed gradient. The estimation of habitat potential using MaxEnt reproduced the distribution trends of fish species with high accuracy, indicating that the habitat potential of multiple fish species can be estimated comprehensively in a watershed by using the MaxEnt model with fish presence data obtained by environmental DNA analysis.
