Ignoring seasonal changes in the ecological niche of non-migratory species may lead to biases in potential distribution models: lessons from bats

Smeraldo, Sonia; Febbraro, Mirko Di; Bosso, Luciano; Flaquer, Carles; Guixé, David; Lisón, Fulgencio; Meschede, Angelika; Juste, Javier; Prüger, Julia; Puig-Montserrat, Xavier; Russo, Danilo

doi:10.1007/s10531-018-1545-7

Cited by 74 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 99 publications

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“…To better understand shifts in habitat preferences throughout the year, we divided occurrence records by season to generate seasonally dynamic SDMs (Hayes, Cryan, et al, ; Smeraldo et al, ). We divided records based on the month of the occurrence record.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species distribution modelling supports “nectar corridor” hypothesis for migratory nectarivorous bats and conservation of tropical dry forest

Burke

Frey

Ganguli

et al. 2019

Diversity and Distributions

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Aim:The Mexican long-tongued bat (Choeronycteris mexicana), Mexican long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris nivalis) and lesser long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae) (Phyllostomidae: Glossophaginae) undertake long-distance migrations from southcentral Mexico to the south-western United States. It is proposed that these bats migrate along a nectar corridor of columnar cacti and Agave species, but this has not been tested with independent data and the spatiotemporal nature of this relationship is poorly understood. Our goal was to test this nectar corridor hypothesis and determine the relative importance of food plant and abiotic variables to the distribution and seasonal movements of these migratory nectarivores.Location: Mexico and the south-western United States. Methods:We generated species distribution models (SDMs) of documented food plants for these bats. We then created SDMs for each bat following a model selection approach, using food plant and abiotic predictor variables. We modelled migration pathways for C. mexicana and L. yerbabuenae using circuit theory and seasonal SDMs based on seasonally available food plants. Main conclusions: Food plants were more important than climatic and topographic variables in shaping the distribution of these bats. The most important predictors of distribution were Agave, columnar cacti and species richness of food plants. Species richness of food plants was the most consistently important variable, but the components of this diversity varied by bat species: Choeronycteris mexicana was influenced by Agave and cacti; Leptonycteris nivalis was influenced solely by Agave; Leptonycteris yerbabuenae was influenced more generally by cacti, Agave and C3 plants. Migration models for C. mexicana and L. yerbabuenae provided independent support for the nectar corridor hypothesis and indicate shifts in relative importance of specific food plants throughout the year. These results suggest that conservation of these bats should focus more broadly on management for species richness of food plants, especially in tropical dry forests.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species distribution modelling supports “nectar corridor” hypothesis for migratory nectarivorous bats and conservation of tropical dry forest

Burke

Frey

Ganguli

et al. 2019

Diversity and Distributions

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Providing the temporal range covered by the environmental variables (B4) is important for two reasons 67,68 . First, shorter temporal ranges can capture finer variation of environments (for example, extremes of daily temperature 69 ), whereas longer temporal ranges capture longer-term trends in environmental conditions (for example, temperature seasonality).…”

Section: Environmental Data (B)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in reality species' geographic distributions are not fixed, but rather are dynamic, and environments can also change over time. Therefore, the temporal dimension is crucial in modelling niches accurately 67,68,70 and affects reproducibility. The temporal dimension of climate data was overlooked in 58% of climate research papers reviewed by Morueta-Holme et al 29 .…”

Section: Models Can Be Projected In Both Space and Timementioning

confidence: 99%

A checklist for maximizing reproducibility of ecological niche models

et al. 2019

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Reporting specific modelling methods and metadata is essential to the reproducibility of ecological studies, yet guidelines rarely exist regarding what information should be noted. Here, we address this issue for ecological niche modelling or species distribution modelling, a rapidly developing toolset in ecology used across many aspects of biodiversity science. Our quantitative review of the recent literature reveals a general lack of sufficient information to fully reproduce the work. Over two-thirds of the examined studies neglected to report the version or access date of the underlying data, and only half reported model parameters. To address this problem, we propose adopting a checklist to guide studies in reporting at least the minimum information necessary for ecological niche modelling reproducibility, offering a straightforward way to balance efficiency and accuracy. We encourage the ecological niche modelling community, as well as journal reviewers and editors, to utilize and further develop this framework to facilitate and improve the reproducibility of future work. The proposed checklist framework is generalizable to other areas of ecology, especially those utilizing biodiversity data, environmental data and statistical modelling, and could also be adopted by a broader array of disciplines.

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“…ENM was conducted with the 'biomod2' package [43] in R [44] using four modeling algorithms (e.g., [45][46][47]). Distributions were reconstructed using mean climatological data for a period spanning 1960-1990, with all variables used at 1-km resolution.…”

Section: The Current State Of Knowledge About Subterranean Termite DImentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological Drivers of Species Distributions and Niche Overlap for Three Subterranean Termite Species in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, USA

Hyseni¹,

Garrick²

2019

Preprint

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In both managed and unmanaged forests, termites are functionally important members of the dead-wood-associated (saproxylic) insect community. However, little is known about regional-scale environmental drivers of geographic distributions of termite species, and how these environmental factors impact co-occurrence among congeneric species. Here we focus on the southern Appalachian Mountains—a well-known center of endemism for forest biota—and use Ecological Niche Modeling (ENM) to examine the distributions of three species of Reticulitermes termites (i.e., R. flavipes, R. virginicus, and R. malletei). To overcome deficiencies in public databases, ENMs were underpinned by field-collected high-resolution occurrence records coupled with molecular taxonomic species identification. Spatial overlap among areas of predicted occurrence of each species was mapped, and aspects of niche similarity were quantified. We also identified environmental factors that most strongly contribute to among-species differences in occupancy. Overall, we found that R. flavipes and R. virginicus showed significant niche divergence, which was primarily driven by dry-season precipitation. Also, all three species were most likely to co-occur in the mid-latitudes of the study area (i.e., northern Alabama and Georgia, eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina), which is an area of considerable topographic complexity. This work provides important baseline information for follow-up studies of local-scale drivers of these species’ distributions. It also identifies specific geographic areas where future assessments of the frequency of true syntopy vs. micro-allopatry, and associated interspecific competitive interactions, should be focused.

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Ignoring seasonal changes in the ecological niche of non-migratory species may lead to biases in potential distribution models: lessons from bats

Cited by 74 publications

References 99 publications

Species distribution modelling supports “nectar corridor” hypothesis for migratory nectarivorous bats and conservation of tropical dry forest

Species distribution modelling supports “nectar corridor” hypothesis for migratory nectarivorous bats and conservation of tropical dry forest

A checklist for maximizing reproducibility of ecological niche models

Ecological Drivers of Species Distributions and Niche Overlap for Three Subterranean Termite Species in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, USA

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