Assessing the carrying capacity of Perinereis aibuhitensis in a Chinese estuarine wetland using a GIS-based habitat suitability index model

Species Distribution Models predict abundance and its temporal variation in a steppe bird population

“…Finally, in terms of general understanding of the relationship between HSI and demography, the main limitation is the idiosyncratic nature of our study. While the literature indicates contrasting correlations of HSI and mean abundance (Lee-Yaw et al, 2022), our study goes further by looking specifically at variations in abundance. Nevertheless, our results concern a particular, low-density species, which faces specific threats and whose study population is the object of a local restoration program.…”

“…In favorable habitats, higher carrying capacities and higher growth rates are expected compared to less favorable habitats. Thus, HSI would be closer to predictions of maximum abundance at a given site than to the abundance observed at a particular time, and could be appropriate tools to estimate the carrying capacity of an environment (Downs et al, 2008;Liu et al, 2017). However, for reasons explained above, the abundance of a species at a given site may exhibit large temporal abundance variation below its carrying capacity.…”

“…However, a recent review showed contrasted and complex relationships between HSI and abundances (Lee-Yaw et al, 2022). The uncertainty associated with the SDM methodology could impact the strength of the relationship between HSI and abundances, either through the variability in SDM modeling methods (Ready et al, 2010;Tôrres et al, 2012), the choice of environmental predictors selected for modeling (Weber et al, 2017) or the implementation of SDM on multiple species and/or small sample size (Lee-Yaw et al, 2022). In addition, spatial and temporal scale constraints are not always accounted for in the large-scale climate predictors often used in SDM (Bean et al, 2014;Baer and Maron, 2020).…”