Uses and requirements of ecological niche models and related distributional models

By A. Townsend Peterson. 2006

477 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Modeling approaches that relate known occurrences of species to landscape features to discover ecological properties and predict geographic occurrences have seen extensive recent application in ecology, systematics, and conservation. A key component in this process is estimation or characterization of species' distributions in ecological space, which can then be useful in understanding their potential distributions in geographic space. Hence, this process is often termed ecological niche modeling or (less boldly) species distribution modeling. Applications of this approach vary widely in their aims, products, and requirements; this variety is reviewed herein, examples are provided, and differences in data needs and possible interpretations are discussed.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/44f2cb478310f5fdab53f5d1d5495b8c364814c2

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In Ecological Modeling

In Ecology

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Botanical richness and endemicity patterns of Borneo derived from species distribution models (2009, background): “…overcome incomplete and biased sampling, and to be able to predict the geographic distributions of species even for areas where no collections have been made, has contributed to the development of species distribution modelling techniques (Araújo and Guisan 2006, Elith et al. 2006, Peterson 2006).”
Grinnellian and Eltonian niches and geographic distributions of species. (2007, background): “In recent years, growing numbers of scientists are estimating distributional areas by calculating environmental , or ecological , niches (Guisan & Zimmermann 2000; Peterson 2006).”
Niche based distribution modelling of an invasive alien plant: effects of population status, propagule pressure and invasion history (2009, background): “Niche-based species distribution models (see Guisan and Zimmermann 2000; Guisan and Thuiller 2005; Peterson 2006 ), have become an important tool for assessing the potential range of species under current as well as under predicted future environmental conditions.”
Species Distribution Modeling and Ecological Niche Modeling: Getting the Concepts Right (2012, background): “Arguments regarding these terms have been numerous (Peterson 2006; Elith & Leathwick 2009; Franklin 2010; Sillero 2011; Araújo & Peterson 2012; Warren 2012) and rather inconclusive.”
Variation in niche and distribution model performance: The need for a priori assessment of key causal factors (2012, background): “Niche modeling and distribution modeling are terms that have been equated quite carelessly in the literature, with “niche” uses treated under the distribution modeling rubric and vice versa (Peterson, 2006).”
Sampling bias and the use of ecological niche modeling in conservation planning: a field evaluation in a biodiversity hotspot (2010, background): “Therefore, the major challenge for ENM is to be able to distinguish models that predict the distribution of the species into areas that are not inhabited (or not sampled) but hold good ecological conditions versus models that predict the species to occur in habitats that in fact are not suitable (Pe”
The Role of Propagule Pressure in Biological Invasions (2009, methodology): “Niche-based distribution models (e.g., Guisan & Thuiller 2005, Peterson 2006) are frequently used to predict the ultimate distribution of introduced species.”
The importance of biotic interactions in species distribution models: a test of the Eltonian noise hypothesis using parrots (2014, background): “Despite the initial good performance of the models, the inclusion of biotic variables increased AUC for all SDMs generated with one of the resolutions modelled (Fig.”
Spatial autocorrelation in predictors reduces the impact of positional uncertainty in occurrence data on species distribution modelling (2011, background): “A key component in this process is estimation of species distribution in ecological space, which can be useful to predict their potential distribution in geographic space (Peterson, 2006).”
Ditch the niche – is the niche a useful concept in ecology or species distribution modelling? (2012, background): “Some of this crosstalk represents different schools of thought (Thuiller, 2003; Peterson, 2006; Elith & Leathwick, 2009; de Souza Muñoz et al., 2011).”
Mapping Species Distributions with MAXENT Using a Geographically Biased Sample of Presence Data: A Performance Assessment of Methods for Correcting Sampling Bias (2014, background): “In order to deal with these questions, several methods of species distribution modeling (SDM), also known as ecological niche modeling (ENM) [10], have been developed since the 1980s [11].”
A null‐model for significance testing of presence‐only species distribution models (2007, background): “It should be kept in mind, however, that SDMs, as they are applied in this study, predict the potential distribution of a species and do not take into account competition, and historical or present geographical barriers (Sobero ´n and Peterson 2005, Peterson 2006 ).”
Predicting distributions of invasive species (2013, methodology): “ The literature on SDMs has expanded rapidly in the last 10 years, and tutorials, books and reviews are regularly emerging; see, for example, Austin (2002, 2007), Elith and Leathwick (2009b), Franklin (2010), Guisan and Thuiller (2005), Guisan and Zimmerman”
What does ecological modelling model? A proposed classification of ecological niche models based on their underlying methods (2011, background): “Soberón and Peterson (2005) defended that most models of ecological niches are not geographic”
The influence of spatial errors in species occurrence data used in distribution models (2007, methodology): “We emphasize that the approaches to model evaluation used here balance correct predictions at both presence and absence sites, and as such focus on current prediction of distributions rather than characterization of ecological niches as described by some authors (e.g. Peterson 2007 ).”
Minimum required number of specimen records to develop accurate species distribution models (2016, background): “Obviously, the desired model accuracy strongly depends on the application (Guisan and Zimmermann 2000, Peterson 2006, Jiménez-Valverde et al. 2011, Liu et al. 2011).”