Mapping species distribution of selected species from Genus Agloanema (Araceae) in Kelantan

Malaysia is listed as one of the biodiversity hotspot. However the forest cover area has been decrease from day to day due to the deforestation for the development and agricultural activities and eventually cause biodiversity hotspot place to lost most of their original habitat. Therefore this biodiversity hotspot is important to use as conservation priorities area and need to be maintained to avoid environmental damage from deforestation. Map of species distribution can help to know the target area for conservation. Several species from genus Agloanema is chosen as they mostly distributed in the tropical rainforest and map of species distribution was generated. The Ecological Niche Modeling (ENM) method is used to map the predict distribution of Agloanema by using the locality data obtained from herbarium and previous study. 19 BIOCLIM environmental data layers that available in online database were layered using GIS to know the area of distribution and which environmental variables effect the most. There are few locality data of genus Agloanema in Kelantan. The statistical method MAXENT. has used to overcome the few localities data using the probability distribution by finding the largest spread in geographic dataset. The result show that the variables that effect the habitat of selected species Agloanema nitidium Jack Kunth and Agloanema simplex Blume are altitude, slope, annual precipitation. and precipitation of the wettest month. It is recommend that the biodiversity data need to be keeping systematically for users to easily assess. The ENM method can be used as rapid assessment tools to design p r further study to promote the conservation planning of in a protected area. Besides. to achieve the Aichi target, this study can be a point of reference to systematic and faster ways.