You have free access to this content

Effects of species’ ecology on the accuracy of distribution models

  1. Jana M. McPherson,
  2. Walter Jetz

Article first published online: 6 NOV 2007

DOI: 10.1111/j.0906-7590.2007.04823.x

Issue

Ecography

Ecography

Volume 30, Issue 1, pages 135–151, February 2007

Additional Information

How to Cite

M. McPherson, J. and Jetz, W. (2007), Effects of species’ ecology on the accuracy of distribution models. Ecography, 30: 135–151. doi: 10.1111/j.0906-7590.2007.04823.x

Author Information

*J. M. McPherson (Jana.McPherson@Dal.Ca), Dept of Zoology, Univ. of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK (present address: Dept of Biology, Dalhousie Univ., 1355 Oxford Street, Halifax NS, B3H 4J1 Canada). – W. Jetz, Div. of Biological Sciences, Univ. of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive MC 0116, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116, USA.

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 6 NOV 2007
  2. Article first published online: 6 NOV 2007
  3. Manuscript Accepted 20 November 2006

SEARCH

SEARCH BY CITATION

ARTICLE TOOLS

View Full Article (HTML) Get PDF (225K)

References

  • Åbjörnsson, K. et al. 2004. Responses of prey from habitats with different predator regimes: local adaptation and heritability. Ecology 85: 1859–1866.
  • Aickin, M. and Gensler, H.. 1996. Adjusting for multiple testing when reporting research results: the Bonferroni vs Holm methods. Am. J. Public Health 86: 726–728.
  • Anon., . 2001. S-Plus 6 for Windows guide to statistics. Vol. 2. Insightful Corporation.
  • Anon., . 2004. 2004 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, accessed online 11 April 2006 at <http://www.iucnredlist.org>.
  • Araújo, M. B. et al. 2005. Validation of species-climate impact models under climate change. Global Change Biol. 11: 1504–1513.
    Direct Link:
  • Augustin, N. H. et al. 1996. An autologistic model for the spatial distribution of wildlife. J. Appl. Ecol. 33: 339–347.
  • Austin, M. P.. 2002. Spatial prediction of species distribution: an interface between ecological theory and statistical modelling. Ecol. Modell. 157: 101–118.
  • Balmford, A. et al. 2002. Economic reasons for conserving wild nature. Science 297: 950–953.
  • Best, L. B. and Stauffer, D. F.. 1986. Factors confounding evaluation of bird-habitat relationships. – In: Verner, J. et al (eds), Wildlife 2000: modeling habitat relationships of terrestrial vertebrates. The Univ. of Wisconsin Press, pp. 209–216.
  • Boone, R. B. and Krohn, W. B.. 1999. Modeling the occurrence of bird species: are the errors predictable?. Ecol. Appl. 9: 835–848.
  • Brotons, L. et al. 2004. Presence-absence versus presence-only modelling methods for predicting bird habitat suitability. Ecography 27: 437–448.
    Direct Link:
  • – In: Brown, L. H. et al (eds), The birds of Africa. Academic Press 19822004..
  • Burns, C. E. et al. 2003. Global climate change and mammalian species diversity in US national parks. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA. 100: 11474–11477.
  • Carswell, M. et al. 2005. Bird atlas of Uganda. British Ornithologists’ Club.
  • Colwell, R. K. and Futuyma, D. J.. 1971. On the measurement of niche breadth and overlap. Ecology 52: 567–576.
  • Corsi, F. et al. 1999. A large-scale model of wolf distribution in Italy for conservation planning. Conserv. Biol. 13: 150–159.
    Direct Link:
  • Dean, W. R. J.. 1997. The distribution and biology of nomadic birds in the Karoo, South Africa. J. Biogeogr. 24: 769–779.
    Direct Link:
  • Dean, W. R. J.. 2000. The birds of Angola: an annotated checklist. British Ornithologists’ Union.
  • De Klerk, H. M. et al. 2002. Biogeographical patterns of endemic terrestrial Afrotropical birds. Div. Distrib. 8: 147–162.
    Direct Link:
  • Diekotter, T. et al. 2006. Effects of landscape elements on the distribution of the rare bumblebee species Bombus muscorum in an agricultural landscape. Biodiv. Conserv. 15: 57–68.
  • Dowsett, R. J. and Forbes-Watson, A. D.. 1993. Checklist of birds of the Afrotropical and Malagasy regions. Tauraco Press.
  • – In: Dunning, J. B. (ed.), CRC handbook of avian body masses. CRC Press 1993..
  • Elith, J. and Burgman, M.. 2002. Predictions and their validation: rare plants in the central highlands, Victoria, Australia. – In: Scott, J. M. et al (eds), Predicting species occurrences – issues of accuracy and scale. Island Press, pp. 303–313.
  • Elith, J. et al. 2006. Novel methods improve prediction of species’ distributions from occurrence data. Ecography 29: 129–151.
    Direct Link:
  • Engler, R. et al. 2004. An improved approach for predicting the distribution of rare and endangered species from occurrence and pseudo-absence data. J. Appl. Ecol. 41: 263–274.
    Direct Link:
  • Fielding, A. H. and Haworth, P. F.. 1995. Testing the generality of bird-habitat models. Conserv. Biol. 9: 1466–1481.
    Direct Link:
  • Fielding, A. H. and Bell, J. F.. 1997. A review of methods for the assessment of prediction errors in conservation presence/absence models. Environ. Conserv. 24: 38–49.
  • Garrison, B. A. and Lupo, T.. 2002. Accuracy of bird range maps based on habitat maps and habitat relationship models. – In: Scott, J. M. et al (eds), Predicting species occurrences – issues of accuracy and scale. Island Press, pp. 367–375.
  • Gibson, L. A. et al. 2004. Spatial prediction of rufous bristlebird habitat in a coastal heathland: a GIS-based approach. J. Appl. Ecol. 41: 213–223.
    Direct Link:
  • – In: Ginn, P. J. et al (eds), The complete book of southern African birds. Struik Winchester 1989..
  • Gioia, P. and Pigott, J. P.. 2000. Biodiversity assessment: a case study in predicting richness from the potential distributions of plant species in the forests of south-western Australia. J. Biogeogr. 27: 1065–1078.
    Direct Link:
  • Girard, M.-C. and Girard, C.. 2003. Processing of remote sensing data. A. A. Balkema Publ.
  • Goetz, S. J. et al. 2000. Advances in satellite remote sensing of environmental variables for epidemiological applications. – In: Hay, S. I. et al (eds), Remote sensing and geographical information systems in epidemiology. Academic Press, pp. 289–307.
  • Grinnell, J.. 1917. Field tests of theories concerning distributional control. Am. Nat. 51: 115–128.
  • Guisan, A. and Zimmermann, N. E.. 2000. Predictive habitat distribution models in ecology. Ecol. Modell. 135: 147–186.
  • Guisan, A. and Thuiller, W.. 2005. Predicting species distribution: offering more than simple habitat models. Ecol. Lett. 8: 993–1009.
    Direct Link:
  • Guralnick, R.. 2006. The legacy of past climate and landscape change on species’ current experienced climate and elevation ranges across latitude: a multispecies study utilizing mammals in western North America. Global Ecol. Biogeogr. 15: 505–518.
  • – In: Harrison, J. A. et al (eds), The atlas of southern African birds. Birdlife South Africa 1997..
  • Hay, S. I.. 2000. An overview of remote sensing and geodesy for epidemiology and public health applications. – In: Hay, S. I. et al (eds), Remote sensing and geographical information systems in epidemiology. Academic Press, pp. 1–35.
  • Hepinstall, J. A. et al. 2002. Effects of niche width on the performance and agreement of avian habitat models. – In: Scott, J. M. et al (eds), Predicting species occurrences – issues of accuracy and scale. Island Press, pp. 593–606.
  • Hoeting, J. A. et al. 2000. An improved model for spatially correlated binary responses. J. Agricult. Biol. Environ. Stat. 5: 102–114.
  • Hoeting, J. A. et al. 2006. Model selection for geostatistical models. Ecol. Appl. 16: 87–98.
  • Holt, R. D.. 2003. On the evolutionary ecology of species’ ranges. Evol. Ecol. Res. 5: 159–178.
  • Huntley, B. et al. 2004. The performance of models relating species geographical distributions to climate is independent of trophic level. Ecol. Lett. 7: 417–426.
    Direct Link:
  • Hutchinson, G. E.. 1957. Concluding remarks. Cold Spring Harb. Symp. 22: 415–427.
  • Hutchinson, G. E.. 1959. Homage to Santa Rosalia: or why are there so many kind of animals?. Am. Nat. 93: 145–159.
  • Joachim, J. et al. 1998. Évaluation par télédétection des biotopes à gélinotte de bois (Bonasa bonasia) dans le Parc national des Cévennes. Gibier Faune Sauvage 15: 31–45.
  • Kadmon, R. et al. 2003. A systematic analysis of factors affecting the performance of climatic envelope models. Ecol. Appl. 13: 853–867.
  • Karl, J. W. et al. 2002. Species commonness and the accuracy of habitat-relationship models. – In: Scott, J. M. et al (eds), Predicting species occurrences – issues of accuracy and scale. Island Press, pp. 573–580.
  • Keitt, T. H. et al. 2002. Accounting for spatial pattern when modeling organism- environment interactions. Ecography 25: 616–625.
    Direct Link:
  • Knapp, R. A. et al. 2003. Developing probabilistic models to predict amphibian site occupancy in a patchy landscape. Ecol. Appl. 13: 1069–1082.
  • Knick, S. T. and Rotenberry, J. T.. 2000. Ghosts of habitats past: contribution of landscape change to current habitats used by shrubland birds. Ecology 81: 220–227.
  • Leathwick, J. R. and Austin, M. P.. 2001. Competitive interactions between tree species in New Zealand's old-growth indigenous forests. Ecology 82: 2560–2573.
  • Legendre, P. and Legendre, L.. 1998. Numerical ecology, 2nd English ed. Elsevier.
  • Lepage, D.. 2005. Avibase – the world bird database Bird Studies Canada and Birdlife International, accessed online 2 March 2005 at <http://www.bsc-eoc.org/avibase/avibase.jsp>.
  • Lewis, A. and Pomeroy, D. E.. 1989. A bird atlas of Kenya. Balkema.
  • Manel, S. et al. 2000. Testing large-scale hypotheses using surveys: the effects of land use on the habitats, invertebrates and birds of Himalayan rivers. J. Appl. Ecol. 37: 756–770.
    Direct Link:
  • McPherson, J. M. et al. 2004. The effects of species’ range sizes on the accuracy of distribution models: ecological phenomenon or statistical artefact?. J. Appl. Ecol. 41: 811–823.
    Direct Link:
  • Michalak, P. et al. 2001. Genetic evidence for adaptation-driven incipient speciation of Drosophila melanogaster along a microclimatic contrast in “Evolution Canyon”, Israel. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 98: 13195–13200.
  • Mitchell, M. S. et al. 2001. Using landscape-level data to predict the distribution of birds on a managed forest: effects of scale. Ecol. Appl. 11: 1692–1708.
  • Neave, H. M. et al. 1996. Biological inventory for conservation evaluation: 3. Relationships between birds, vegetation and environmental attributes in southern Australia. For. Ecol. Manage. 85: 197–218.
  • Osborne, P. E. and Suarez-Seoane, S.. 2002. Should data be partitioned spatially before building large-scale distribution models?. Ecol. Modell. 157: 249–259.
  • Parker, V.. 1994. Swaziland bird atlas, 1985–1991. Websters.
  • Parker, V.. 1999. The atlas of birds of Sul do Save, southern Mozambique. Avian Demography Unit and the Endangered Wildlife Trust.
  • Pearce, J. and Ferrier, S.. 2000. Evaluating the predictive performance of habitat models developed using logistic regression. Ecol. Modell. 133: 225–245.
  • Pearce, J. et al. 2001. An evaluation of the predictive performance of distributional models for flora and fauna in north-east New South Wales. J. Environ. Manage. 62: 171–184.
  • Perneger, T. V.. 1998. What's wrong with Bonferroni adjustments. Brit. Med. J. 316: 1236–1238.
  • Peterson, A. T. and Holt, R. D.. 2003. Niche differentiation in Mexican birds: using point occurrences to detect ecological innovation. Ecol. Lett. 6: 774–782.
    Direct Link:
  • Pulliam, H. R.. 2000. On the relationship between niche and distribution. Ecol. Lett. 3: 349–361.
    Direct Link:
  • Real, R. et al. 2006. Obtaining environmental favourability functions from logistic regression. Environ. Ecol. Stat. 13: 237–245.
  • Rogers, D. J. et al. 1996. Predicting the distribution of tsetse flies in West Africa using temporal Fourier processed meteorological satellite data. Ann. Trop. Med. Parasitol. 90: 225–241.
  • Sakamoto, Y. et al. 1986. Akaike information criterion statistics. D. Reidel Publ. Company.
  • Scribner, K. T. et al. 2001. Environmental correlates of toad abundance and population genetic diversity. Biol. Conserv. 98: 201–210.
  • Segurado, P. and Araújo, M. B.. 2004. An evaluation of methods for modelling species distributions. J. Biogeogr. 31: 1555–1568.
    Direct Link:
  • Şekercioğlu, Ç. H. et al. 2004. Ecosystem consequences of bird declines. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 101: 18042–18047.
  • Sibley, C. G. and Monroe, B. L.. 1990. Distribution and taxonomy of the birds of the world. Yale Univ. Press.
  • Sibley, C. G. and Monroe, B. L.. 1993. A supplement to the distribution and taxonomy of birds of the world. Yale Univ. Press.
  • Stockwell, D. R. B. and Peterson, A. T.. 2002. Effects of sample size on accuracy of species distribution models. Ecol. Modell. 148: 1–13.
  • Suarez-Seoane, S. et al. 2002. Large-scale habitat selection by agricultural steppe birds in Spain: identifying species-habitat responses using generalized additive models. J. Appl. Ecol. 39: 755–771.
    Direct Link:
  • Thuiller, W.. 2003. BIOMOD – optimizing predictions of species distributions and projecting potential future shifts under global change. Global. Change Biol. 9: 1353–1362.
    Direct Link:
  • Thuiller, W. et al. 2004. Relating plant traits and species distributions along bioclimatic gradients for 88 Leucadendron taxa. Ecology 85: 1688–1699.
  • Thuiller, W. et al. 2005. Niche-based modelling as a tool for predicting the risk of alien plant invasions at a global scale. Global. Change Biol. 11: 2234–2250.
    Direct Link:
  • Vaughan, I. P. and Ormerod, S. J.. 2003. Improving the quality of distribution models for conservation by addressing shortcomings in the field collection of training data. Conserv. Biol. 17: 1601–1611.
    Direct Link:
  • Verbyla, D. L. and Litvaitis, J. A.. 1989. Resampling methods for evaluating classification accuracy of wildlife habitat models. Environ. Manage. 13: 783–787.
  • Walther, B. A. et al. 2004. Known and predicted African winter distributions and habitat use of the endangered Basra reed warbler (Acrocephalus griseldis) and the near-threatened cinereous bunting (Emberiza cineracea). J. Ornithol. 145: 287–299.
  • Wiens, J. J. and Graham, C. H.. 2005. Niche conservatism: integrating evolution, ecology, and conservation biology. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 36: 519–539.
View Full Article (HTML) Get PDF (225K)