A standard protocol for reporting species distribution models

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.

Assessing the reliability of species distribution projections in climate change research

“…Our literature review points out that a large part of papers that model species distribution under climate change rely on single models (typically MaxEnt), include models fitted on very small samples, use presence-only data, and typically binarize models' output to measure range shift, contraction or expansion. Consistently with previous analyses (Araújo et al 2019), it also highlighted how poor modelling practices are common in the literature, especially in relation to the use of very small samples, lack of ecological considerations in the selection of model predictors, and non-reporting of fundamental information on background sample selection and study area (Zurell et al 2020). When exploring the influence of these practices on the predictive accuracy using a virtual species approach, we found out that the estimated discrimination capacity by TSS and AUC does not reflect the actual predictive ability of SDMs, and tends to be over-optimistic compared to the real model performance when predicted under present conditions, and especially when projected to future (different) conditions.…”

“…Our study indicates that our ability to predict future species distribution is low under on average, and can be low to the point of not being meaningful when conditions are far from optimal, especially when models' predictions are binarized. Hence, SDM based climate change forecasting must adhere to the highest standards, must be clearly described (Zurell et al 2020), and the estimated accuracy of models should be interpreted with extreme care, as well as the results, especially in relation to the quantification of range shifts, contraction and expansion, and the identification of areas that will be lost or gained. These considerations are also valid (and perhaps more problematic considering the wide temporal window and static niche assumption) in the case of hind-casting to paleoclimates, which is now common in studies focused on refugia and phylogeography (e.g.…”

Geographic potential of the world’s largest hornet,Vespa mandariniaSmith (Hymenoptera: Vespidae), worldwide and particularly in North America

“…To assure transparency and reproducibility of our work, we include an Overview, Data, Model, Assessment, and Prediction protocol (ODMAP; Zurell et al, 2020) in our supplementary materials. This metadata summary provides a detail key steps included in our analyses.…”

Integrative taxonomy identifies a new stingray species of the genus Hypanus Rafinesque, 1818 (Dasyatidae, Myliobatiformes), from the Tropical Southwestern Atlantic

“…Two ecological niche models (ENM) were developed in compliance with the ODMAP protocol (overview/conceptualisation, data, model fitting, assessment and prediction) suggested by Zurell et al (2020).…”