bioclim: the first species distribution modelling package, its early applications and relevance to most current MaxEnt studies

Abstract

Aim Interest in species distribution models (SDMs) and related niche studies has increased dramatically in recent years, with several books and reviews being prepared since 2000. The earliest SDM studies are dealt with only briefly even in the books. Consequently, many researchers are unaware of when the first SDM software package (BIOCLIM) was developed and how a broad range of applications using the package was explored within the first 8 years following its release. The purpose of this study is to clarify these early developments and initial applications, as well as to highlight BIOCLIM's continuing relevance to current studies.Location Mainly Australia and New Zealand, but also some global applications.Methods We outline the development of the BIOCLIM package, early applications (1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991) and its current relevance.Results BIOCLIM was the first SDM package to be widely used. Early applications explored many of the possible uses of SDMs in conservation biogeography, such as quantifying the environmental niche of species, identifying areas where a species might be invasive, assisting conservation planning and assessing the likely impacts of climate change on species distributions.Main conclusions Understanding this pioneering work is worthwhile as BIOCLIM was for many years one of the leading SDM packages and remains widely used. Climate interpolation methods developed for BIOCLIM were used to create the WorldClim database, the most common source of climate data for SDM studies, and BIOCLIM variables are used in about 76% of recent published MAXENT analyses of terrestrial ecosystems. Also, some of the BIOCLIM studies from the late 1980s, such as measuring niche (both realized and fundamental) and assessing possible impacts of climate change, are still highly relevant to key conservation biogeography issues.

Fallacies and fantasies: the theoretical underpinnings of the Coexistence Approach for palaeoclimate reconstruction

“…The beginnings of the field lie in the BIOCLIM software package (Nix, 1986), which is comparable to the Coexistence Approach as it used the range (or percentile range) of climatic variables in a rectilinear fashion. Booth et al (2014) describe the origins of the field and highlight that one of the most active areas of SDM development has been in methods that trim the rectilinear climate envelopes of BIOCLIM. The development was driven by the early realisation that the relationships between climate variables were poorly captured by the rectilinear approach; for example, a rectilinear niche may suggest that a species could survive in a situation where it is both hot and dry, but the actual climate niche indicates that it only occurs where it is hot and wet.…”

Evaluation of Monitoring Traps for <I>Drosophila suzukii</I> (Diptera: Drosophilidae) in North America

“…In this regard, different algorithms for modeling ecological niches have been published that use presence and absence data or only presence in conjunction with environmental variables in a particular zone (Phillips et al 2006;Franklin 2009;Peterson et al 2011). Maximum Entropy Ecological niche modeling with the MaxEnt algorithm is one of the most popular methodologies for modeling species distribution (Phillips et al 2006;Booth et al 2014).…”

An early suitability assessment of two exotic Ophraella species (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) for biological control of invasive ragweed in Europe

“…Species distribution models (SDMs) are a common tool used to predict species distributions based on environmental similarities. Generally, SDMs use data on species-level biogeography and ecology, relate these to environmental space, and map likely species distributions, under current or possible future conditions (Booth et al, 2014). The specifi c modelling methodology chosen depends on the system studied and the availability of suitable data.…”