A GIS-based policy support tool to determine national responsibilities and priorities for biodiversity conservation

(arithmetic mean = 0.13, median = 0). Looking at rank switching above the 75%-quartile, we saw only one exchange, which occurred between Nepal and Bhutan (2 out of 13 = 15.38%). When we used the PA-A instead of the PC-A, Bhutan had a medium responsibility score for three additional species. This is in stark contrast to the rank switches we observed below the 25%-quartile of the distribution. Here, we found that 10 out of 13 (76.92%) countries changed rank, which shows the summation of rank changes over larger ranges and in different posi- tions, but not paired exchanges in the same positions (Table 3). Generally, large countries like Russia, China, and India receive low national responsibility scores for a high number of species (Fig 8E and 8F). Conservation priority Using the Polygon Area-Approach with GEnZ [50] as biogeographical units and IUCN global Red List status to determine conservation priority, none of the 258 bird species in the focal area fell within Class 1 (Fig 9A and 9B), due to their low threat status. Generally, the results for both approaches were similar for national responsibility as well as for conservation priority (Fig 9). However, using the Polygon Area-Approach based on intersections of the overlapping polygons leads to results more balanced among countries compared to the simple Polygon Count-Approach originally used in [1, 7, 36, 37]. Fig 8. Number out of 258 analyzed species in Asian regions and countries for which a country has a certain national responsibility. BUs = GEnZ. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243135.g008 PLOS ONE

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