Spatial Modeling of Habitat and Connectivity for Three Forest Vertebrates in Mesoamerican Cloud Forests

Tropical Montane Cloud Forests (TMCFs) are considered a rare and highly specialized type of ecosystem. They are distinguished by the frequent presence of clouds and mist at the canopy level. They occur where mountains are regularly enveloped by trade wind–driven orographic clouds and convective cloud systems. TMCFs are strongly linked to regular cycles of cloud formation, with one of the most direct ecological influences being the deposition onto soil and vegetation surfaces through fog interception. This process contributes to consistently high moisture availability and supports unique forest structure, productivity, and biodiversity. 

Despite their high biodiversity and endemicity, TMCFs are ranked among the most threatened ecosystems on a global scale. This distinct ecozone is restricted by elevation, terrain, precipitation, and climate. Furthermore, due to the fragmentation of TMCFs and their susceptibility to climate change, their ecological threat levels are higher. TMCFs are extremely sensitive to climate change and human activities. Climate change not only threatens TMCFs but also reduces the possibility of  upward treeline movement because of high solar radiation and evaporation at higher altitudes. 

Despite their ecological importance, TMCFs are experiencing rapid degradation because of climate change and land-use pressure. Rising temperatures, altered precipitation regimes, and shifts in cloud base height threaten to reduce suitable climatic envelopes, accelerate habitat fragmentation, and disrupt ecological connectivity across montane landscapes. As a result, elevation, landscape, precipitation and climate are the main constraints of TMCFs. These limitations make TMCFs particularly vulnerable to environmental change. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how TMCFs forest structure and connectivity are distributed across space. 

 Using remote-sensing and spatial modeling framework, this study evaluates habitat suitability and landscape connectivity of three species in Mesoamerican TMCFs. The three species are cloud-forest–associated vertebrates: Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno), Violet Sabrewing (Campylopterus hemileucurus), and Baird’s Tapir (Tapirus bairdii). The analyses presented here emphasize cloud forest condition and connectivity rather than species-specific outcomes.

The region of interest ranges from southern Mexico through Central America, including core TMCFs areas found in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and western Panama. Species occurrence data was gathered from iNaturalist and eBird platforms. A set of environmental predictors covering climate, topography, vegetation productivity, and anthropogenic pressure were compiled from global databases. Habitat suitability models were produced through Maximum Entropy (Maxent), a species distribution modeling approach, by utilizing these environmental predictors and evaluating their accuracy using k-fold cross-validation tests. These suitability outputs were further transformed into resistance surfaces and used to identify high-resistance cloud forest areas, movement corridors, and bottlenecks. 

We expect suitable TMCF habitat to be highly related to high-elevation, moist environments and to decline sharply across lowland and landscapes with human intervention. Under continued climate warming and the expansion of human activities, further contraction and fragmentation of TMCFs are anticipated, increasing the importance of remaining habitats for maintaining ecological resilience.

By centering on TMCFs structure and connectivity, this study provides spatially explicit information to support conservation prioritization, land-use planning, and climate-adaptation strategies, offering decision-makers a scalable framework for protecting one of the world’s most climate-sensitive ecosystems.