Model complexity affects species distribution projections under climate change

By Philipp Brun, Wilfried Thuiller, Yohann Chauvier, Loïc Pellissier, Rafael O. Wüest, Zhiheng Wang, N. E. Zimmermann. Journal of Biogeography, 2019

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Statistical species distribution models (SDMs) are the most common tool to predict the impact of climate change on biodiversity. They can be tuned to fit relationships at various levels of complexity (defined here as parameterization complexity, number of predictors, and multicollinearity) that may co‐determine whether projections to novel climatic conditions are useful or misleading. Here, we assessed how model complexity affects the performance of model extrapolations and influences projections of species ranges under future climate change.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2cf2be230c70033777b04122feb3b0a56805ccab