No abstract

Species distribution models (SDMs) constitute the most common class of models across ecology, evolution and conservation. The advent of ready‐to‐use software packages and increasing availability of digital geoinformation have considerably assisted the application of SDMs in the past decade, greatly enabling their broader use for informing conservation and management, and for quantifying impacts from global change. However, models must be fit for purpose, with all important aspects of their development and applications properly considered. Despite the widespread use of SDMs, standardisation and documentation of modelling protocols remain limited, which makes it hard to assess whether development steps are appropriate for end use. To address these issues, we propose a standard protocol for reporting SDMs, with an emphasis on describing how a study's objective is achieved through a series of modeling decisions. We call this the ODMAP (Overview, Data, Model, Assessment and Prediction) protocol, as its components reflect the main steps involved in building SDMs and other empirically‐based biodiversity models. The ODMAP protocol serves two main purposes. First, it provides a checklist for authors, detailing key steps for model building and analyses, and thus represents a quick guide and generic workflow for modern SDMs. Second, it introduces a structured format for documenting and communicating the models, ensuring transparency and reproducibility, facilitating peer review and expert evaluation of model quality, as well as meta‐analyses. We detail all elements of ODMAP, and explain how it can be used for different model objectives and applications, and how it complements efforts to store associated metadata and define modelling standards. We illustrate its utility by revisiting nine previously published case studies, and provide an interactive web‐based application to facilitate its use. We plan to advance ODMAP by encouraging its further refinement and adoption by the scientific community.

Understanding niche evolution, dynamics, and the response of species to climate change requires knowledge of the determinants of the environmental niche and species range limits. Mean values of climatic variables are often used in such analyses. In contrast, the increasing frequency of climate extremes suggests the importance of understanding their additional influence on range limits. Here, we assess how measures representing climate extremes (i.e., interannual variability in climate parameters) explain and predict spatial patterns of 11 tree species in Switzerland. We find clear, although comparably small, improvement (؉20% in adjusted D 2 , ؉8% and ؉3% in cross-validated True Skill Statistic and area under the receiver operating characteristics curve values) in models that use measures of extremes in addition to means. The primary effect of including information on climate extremes is a correction of local overprediction and underprediction. Our results demonstrate that measures of climate extremes are important for understanding the climatic limits of tree species and assessing species niche characteristics. The inclusion of climate variability likely will improve models of species range limits under future conditions, where changes in mean climate and increased variability are expected.climate change ͉ ecological niche ͉ generalized additive model ͉ geographic range ͉ species distribution models T he understanding of the principles and mechanisms that shape distribution patterns has long been a focus in biogeographical, ecological, and evolutionary research. The ecological niche concept, coined and initially developed by Grinnell (1), is the foundation for our understanding of the processes that shape the geographical distributions of species (2). Conceptual clarifications with regards to using the concept for the explanation of species ranges have been presented by several authors (3, 4). Climatic variables are often used to predict biogeographical patterns (5), and considerable effort has been put into improving methods to describe the response of species along climate gradients (6-8). These methods of species distribution or niche modeling are frequently used for conservation management (9-12), prediction of the likely effects of global change (13-16), and, increasingly, assessment of niche characteristics in the study of niche evolution (17)(18)(19)(20). These studies in general use monthly or annual climatic means to analyze species distribution patterns. To date, little attention has been paid to the question of how climatic extremes, i.e., the long-term, interannual variation around mean values, could help to explain species distributions. There are two major reasons that highlight the importance of including climatic variability in niche analyses and models. First, ongoing climate change not only affects means but also extremes (21). Second, niche evolution often results in changes of the stress tolerance of evolving clades (22, 23). Thus, both adaptation and possible future response of species to c...

Aim Species ranges have adapted during the Holocene to altering climate conditions, but it remains unclear if species will be able to keep pace with recent and future climate change. The goal of our study is to assess the influence of changing macroclimate, competition and habitat connectivity on the migration rates of 14 tree species. We also compare the projections of range shifts from species distribution models (SDMs) that incorporate realistic migration rates with classical models that assume no or unlimited migration. Location Europe.Methods We calibrated SDMs with species abundance data from 5768 forest plots from ICP Forest Level 1 in relation to climate, topography, soil and land-use data to predict current and future tree distributions. To predict future species ranges from these models, we applied three migration scenarios: no migration, unlimited migration and realistic migration. The migration rates for the SDMs incorporating realistic migration were estimated according to macroclimate, interspecific competition and habitat connectivity from simulation experiments with a spatially explicit process model (TreeMig). From these relationships, we then developed a migration cost surface to constrain the predicted distributions of the SDMs. ResultsThe distributions of early-successional species during the 21st century predicted by SDMs that incorporate realistic migration matched quite well with the unlimited migration assumption (mean migration rate over Europe for A1fi/GRAS climate and land-use change scenario 156.7 Ϯ 79.1 m year -1 and for B1/SEDG 164.3 Ϯ 84.2 m year -1 ). The predicted distributions of mid-to late-successional species matched better with the no migration assumption (A1fi/GRAS, 15.2 Ϯ 24.5 m year -1 and B1/SEDG, 16.0 Ϯ 25.6 m year -1 ). Inter-specific competition, which is higher under favourable growing conditions, reduced range shift velocity more than did adverse macroclimatic conditions (i.e. very cold or dry climate). Habitat fragmentation also led to considerable time lags in range shifts. Main conclusionsMigration rates depend on species traits, competition, spatial habitat configuration and climatic conditions. As a result, re-adjustments of species ranges to climate and land-use change are complex and very individualistic, yet still quite predictable. Early-successional species track climate change almost instantaneously while mid-to late-successional species were predicted to migrate very slowly.

No abstract