Persian Leopard is the most prominent mammals in Iran, where most of its distribution is known to be in this country. Dispersion of this species depends on anthropological and climatical factors. Studying its habitat as a keystone species is really important because it has effects on the functions of the ecosystem. With this all said, conservation measures are crucial for this species. Based on the previous studies, despite the wide range of Iranian leopard diet, factors such as land use change has reduced its prey in many areas. Nowadays new habitat modelling methods play an important role in Wildlife management and conservation. One of these methods is the MaxEnt approach. In this study, using this method and using variables of land cover, topographic, climatic and human-made, modeling to predict suitable habitats of Persian Leopard, Wild Goat, Urial Wild sheep and Armenian Wild sheep were performed as their favorite preys. Based on the model evaluation results by using Jackknife index and response curves showed that Persian Leopard, Wild Goat, Urial Wild sheep and Armenian Wild sheep have shown significant responses to the distance of protected areas. It also showed that taking distance from protected areas to reduce habitat suitabilities for the studied species. Also, Persian leopard habitats have significant overlaps with its 3 favourite prey. This shows the importance of Wild goats, Urial and Armenian Wild sheep in Persian leopard habitats.

Nowadays, climate change, drought and habitat fragmentation threaten biodiversity throughout the world. Beside of natural incidents, anthropogenic factors are the most important reasons for disconnecting genetic flow between habitat patches. Hence establishing suitable habitat corridors is very vital for migratory species or wide-ranging animals. Such animals need to migrate repeatedly to their recognized home ranges, but are often faced with many natural physical barriers or man-made obstacles in their habitats which resulted stress and forced dispersion of animal groups. If a suitable habitat is not provided, Wildlife groups will inevitably become scattered and we will be faced with isolated meta-populations and biodiversity degradation over the long-term and this event may lead to species extinction in the future. In this research, at first four factors including topographic position, digital elevation model (DEM), distance to road and land cover layers were selected to assign habitat suitability. At the next step, habitat patches were extracted through weighting these factors and their characteristics into the GIS environment. Then, the suitability and ecological resistance maps were used to calculate the cost-distance factor to extract potential habitat corridors with considering the least distant-cost path criterion. These alternative corridors were then corrected for accuracy by field visits and consideration of probable land-use conflicts and desired corridors were finally selected. In the end, the selected corridors were ranked Considering annual allocated budget for installing and priority of corridors.

The phylogenetic study of Tangsayad and Kerayi Wild sheep populations was conducted by using 5 microsatellite markers (BM6444, MCM63, MCMA2, LSCV38, and OARAE129). The PCR responses for all 5 markers were done truly and each marker was checked. The OARAE129, LSCV38, MCM63 markers showed a meaningful deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in Wild sheep populations, and 60% of Poly Morf locus which contains 3 LSCV38, MCM63, OARAE129 markers, and the two MCMA2 and BM6444 markers were Mono Morf. Low average of Allel for any locus (1.6 Allel) showed the low genetic diversity of Wild sheep. Nie (1972, 1978) indicators were used to obtain the genetic distance between two Wild sheep populations, which showed the high genetic similarity (0.9615) and (0.9771) and low genetic distance (0.0392) and (0.0232) in Tangsayad and Karayi Wild sheep populations. Observing the average heterozygosity showed that life and the future of these animals are in danger.

Objective: Cloning an individual by transferring somatic nuclei into enucleated recipient oocytes has already been well established. This technology also offers new opportunities to restore threatened species with interspecies somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). However, few mammalian species have been studied for their reproductive biology whereas huge differences have been observed between these species. This study evaluated the similarities and genetical relationship of germ lines and the reproductive biology between domestic (Ovis aries) and threatened Wild sheep (Ovis orientalis isphahanica).Materials and Methods: Six populations of Wild and domestic sheep were sampled and analyzed for chromosome number, interbreeding capability and fecundity. Resulted hybrids (male or female) were investigated for survival, karyotyping and fertility.Results: Both the domestic and Wild sheep uniformly exhibited a 2n of 54 and were able to crossbreed and induce sustainable pregnancy into the counterpart species. The resultant hybrids (male or female) which were produced by either Wild ram × domestic ewe or domestic ram × Wild ewe had identical chromosome number (2n=54). Normal genital apparatuses and fertile conditions were observed in both types of adult hybrids.Conclusion: The results indicated a very close generational relationship between the Wild and domestic sheep species and also the possibility of domestic species to be used as an abundant genetic background for saving endangered Wild sheep via SCNT.

The present experiment was conducted to determine nutritional values of Wild pistachio trees (P. khinjuk) leaves it's use it in the diet of sheep. Initially chemical composition of P. khinjuk leaf was determined. The diets containing 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30% of P. khinjuk leaf were prepared and used for sheep to determine the best replacement level of it with corn silage. Fermentation and digestion characteristics of experimental diets were investigated by in vitro gas production technique. Effects of selected diets from the in vitro step (control and diet contains 30% of the khinjuk leaf) on feed intake, digestibility of nutrients, ruminal fermentation parameters and blood metabolites were studied using 10 Arabian rams in a completely randomized design. The concentration of crude protein, NDF, ADF and tannin in khinjuk leaf were 9.88, 47.95, 39.02 and 3.9%, respectively. The gas production declined by increasing the percentage of P. khinjuk leaf in the diet, but the microbial biomass and efficiency of microbial synthesis was increased (P<0.05). Dry matter intake was increased in sheep fed diets containing P. khinjuk leaf. There was no significant difference for apparent digestibility of dry matter, NDF, ADF, and blood glucose and cholesterol among experimental diets (P>0.05). Digestibility of crude protein and concentration of ammonia nitrogen in rumen fluid and blood urea nitrogen in diet containing of P. khinjuk leaf was lower (P<0.05). Therefore, dietary inclusion of P. khinjuk leaf up to 30% in the diets of sheep had no negative effect on digestibility, ruminal and blood parameters of sheep.

Climate change, by intensifying habitat destruction and altering species distributions, has emerged as a major challenge for conservation biologists. The Wild goat (Capra aegagrus) and the Wild sheep (Ovis gmelini) are among the most prominent large herbivores in Iran. This study aimed to assess the impacts of climate change on the habitat distribution of these two species in Fars Province. The MaxEnt model and various climate scenarios were used to predict current and future (2070) habitat suitability. Results indicated that distance from protected areas and slope were the most influential variables in predicting suitable habitats for both species. Under current conditions, 15.56% of the area was identified as suitable habitat for Wild goats, and 32.9% for Wild sheep. Projections under different climate scenarios revealed that suitable habitat for Wild goats may decline by up to 62%, and for Wild sheep by up to 64%. Additionally, within the currently managed protected areas of the Fars province, 75.16% of the habitats overlaps with suitable habitat for mouflons and 48.71%  overlapd with suitable habitat for Wild goats. These findings highlight the urgent need for effective habitat conservation and management strategies in the face of anticipated climate change impacts.