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Protected areas are key to meeting biodiversity conservation goals, but
direct measures of effectiveness have proven difficult to obtain. We
address this challenge by using environmental DNA from leech-ingested
bloodmeals to estimate spatially-resolved vertebrate occupancies across
the 677 km2 Ailaoshan reserve in Yunnan, China. From 30,468 leeches
collected by 163 park rangers across 172 patrol areas, we identify 86
vertebrate species, including amphibians, mammals, birds and squamates.
Multi-species occupancy modelling shows that species richness increases
with elevation and distance to reserve edge. Most large mammals (e.g.
sambar, black bear, serow, tufted deer) follow this pattern; the
exceptions are the three domestic mammal species (cows, sheep, goats) and
muntjak deer, which are more common at lower elevations. Vertebrate
occupancies are a direct measure of conservation outcomes that can help
guide protected-area management and improve the contributions that
protected areas make towards global biodiversity goals. Here, we show the
feasibility of using invertebrate-derived DNA to estimate
spatially-resolved vertebrate occupancies across entire protected areas.
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