Geographical distribution of Asian houbara is limited to the dry and hot parts of Oriental and Palearctic Eco zones. Populations of Asian houbara have been decreasing in most of the species distribution range. Knowledge on the distribution of suitable habitats of a species is central in developing conservation strategies for that species. In this study, maximum entropy algorithms were used to predict wintering and breeding distribution of Asian houbara in Iran and to find the best environmental predictor variables that affect the occurrence of the species. 420 wintering and 176 breeding present points of the Asian Houbara Bustard were recorded in 17 provinces during 2014-2015 getting collaboration of Department of Environment. The accuracy of the models was assessed by the area under the ROC curev (AUC). The ROCs (average AUC) for the wintering and breeding habitat were 0.827 and 0.881, respectively. Mean temperature of the coldest quarter of the year emerged as the most important variable determining habitat suitability of wintering populations of houbara followed by roughness, annual precipitation, slope and density of vegetation with cover of 2%-25%. Annual precipitation had the greatest impact on the development of breeding habitat model. According to Jackknife analysis, mean temperature of warmest quarter, roughness, slope, density of vegetation with cover of 5%-25%, and isothermally were the most important variables that affected the gain in the model. The best places for wintering populations of houbara in Iran are in the following Iranian provinces: east of Isfahan, western Kerman, central and southern parts of Yazd, northern Semnan, Southern Razavi Khorasan and northern South Khorasan. The area of suitable habitats for residentbreeding and wintering populations of this species in Iran are about 175777, 40771 and 271949 Km 2 respectively. The protected areas cover respectively 30247, 7881, 39038 Km 2 of these suitable habitats. The obtained results have implications for conservation of Asian houbara. Keywords : MaximumEntropy,rotected, areas,huntingareas,eciedistributiomodels, MaxEnt
