Vanilla, an expensive but popular spice used in many industries, faces problems related to its supply. Some of these problems are due to the fact that vanilla cultivation is based on clonal material of a single species (Vanilla planifolia) and is dominated by just a few countries located outside the native growing areas of aromatic vanilla species, which is the neotropics. Despite the economic importance of this crop, relatively little attention has been paid to its wild relatives, in particular with respect to their biology, ecology, and potential use. We hypothesized that species distribution models (SDMs) can identify suitable areas for both the conservation and cultivation of vanilla crop wild relatives (CWRs), following a joint land sparing/land sharing (SPASHA) approach, thus offering alternative sourcing areas and production methods. This is the first study that explored the use of ensemble SDMs to provide applicable land use maps related to the conservation and sustainable cultivation of wild vanilla species in Costa Rica, contributing to a solution for the problems related to current vanilla production systems. We focused on four aromatic vanilla CWRs, native to Costa Rica, to make land use policy recommendations for this country, and more specifically for the biological corridor Osa and its surroundings within our study region Área de Conservación Osa (ACOSA). The resulting distribution maps, with a mean AUC of 0.89, reflected their current potential distribution (ranging from unsuitable to suitable) in Costa Rica. Combining them with recent land use and conservation area maps of our study region, we defined (1) areas for vanilla conservation and (2) areas for sustainable vanilla cultivation within agroforestry systems. These land use recommendations can now be integrated within the National Bio‐Corridor Program (PNCB) that aims at making biological corridors more productive by proposing alternative income generation for local communities living within these areas. Our approach can be applied to identify priority areas for implementing the SPASHA approach on other vanilla CWRs and in more regions across its native growing ranges, given the availability of land use maps and enough occurrence records to build accurate SDMs.

中文翻译：

---

保留土地/共享土地的概念中用于保护和可持续种植的香草分布模型

香草是许多行业中使用的昂贵但受欢迎的香料，它面临着与其供应有关的问题。其中一些问题是由于香草种植基于单一物种的克隆材料（香草原叶），并且仅由位于芳香香草物种（即新热带）本土生长区域之外的几个国家控制。尽管该作物具有经济重要性，但对其野生近缘种的关注相对较少，特别是在其生物学，生态学和潜在用途方面。我们假设，遵循土地节约/土地共享（SPASHA）联合方法，物种分布模型（SDM）可以确定适合保护和种植香草作物野生近缘种（CWR）的区域，从而提供替代的采购区域和生产方法。这是首次研究使用整体SDM来提供与哥斯达黎加野生香草物种的保护和可持续种植有关的适用土地利用图，为解决与当前香草生产系统有关的问题做出了贡献。我们重点研究了四个原产于哥斯达黎加的芳香香草CWR，为该国，特别是针对我们研究区ÁreadeConservaciónOsa（ACOSA）内的生物走廊Osa及其周围地区，提出了土地使用政策建议。最终的分布图的平均AUC为0.89，反映了它们在哥斯达黎加的当前电势分布（从不合适到合适）。结合我们研究区域的近期土地利用和保护区地图，我们定义了（1）香草保护区和（2）农林业系统内可持续香草种植区。这些土地使用建议现在可以纳入国家生物走廊计划（PNCB）中，该计划旨在通过为生活在这些地区的当地社区提出替代性创收计划来提高生物走廊的生产力。考虑到可用的土地利用图和足够的事件记录来建立准确的SDM，我们的方法可以用于确定优先领域，以便在其他香草CWR以及其本地生长范围的更多区域中实施SPASHA方法。