Context With accelerating global declines in biodiversity, establishment and expansion of conservation areas (CAs) have increasingly been advocated in recent decades. Gap analysis has been useful to evaluate the sufficiency and performance of CAs. Objectives Researchers often identify putative gaps in the protection of biodiversity in CA networks, drawing on evidence from species occurrence patterns (i.e., representation), yet the effect on the gap analyses of the spatial configuration of CAs is poorly understood. Methods Focusing on two large, charismatic carnivores of western Asia, Persian leopard and Asiatic cheetah, we used species distribution models (SDMs) to map potentially suitable habitats throughout the region. We calculated species representation for four categories of CAs within the conservation network in Iran and used a new application of graph theory to include their spatial configuration into our gap analysis. We then regressed species representation against spatial configuration to provide more insights into the performance of different categories of CAs. Results Results showed that the existing CA network conserves only 32% of the suitable habitats for the two species. Leveraging spatial configuration of the conservation areas into the gap analysis, however, revealed that the recently-established less strictly CAs disproportionately provide a higher contribution to the collective effectiveness of the entire conservation network. Conclusions We introduce network bias as a new concept in reserve design and argue that incorporating spatial configuration into CA gap analysis improves the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of reserve network designs, and is an important decision support tool for integrated conservation planning.

中文翻译：

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物种和空间：联合差距分析指导保护区管理规划

背景 随着全球生物多样性加速下降，近几十年来越来越多地提倡建立和扩大保护区 (CA)。差距分析有助于评估 CA 的充分性和性能。目标 研究人员经常利用来自物种发生模式（即代表性）的证据，确定 CA 网络中生物多样性保护方面的假定差距，但对 CA 空间配置差距分析的影响却知之甚少。方法 关注西亚的两种大型有魅力的食肉动物波斯豹和亚洲猎豹，我们使用物种分布模型 (SDM) 来绘制整个地区可能适合的栖息地。我们计算了伊朗保护网络内四类 CA 的物种表示，并使用图论的新应用将它们的空间配置纳入我们的差距分析。然后，我们根据空间配置回归物种表示，以提供对不同类别 CA 性能的更多见解。结果 结果表明，现有的 CA 网络仅为这两个物种保留了 32% 的适宜栖息地。然而，在差距分析中利用保护区的空间配置表明，最近建立的不太严格的 CA 对整个保护区网络的集体有效性做出了更大的贡献。