Importance of biotic predictors in estimation of potential invasive areas: the example of the tortoise beetleEurypedus nigrosignatus, in Hispaniola

Abstract

Climatic variables have been the main predictors employed in ecological niche modeling and species distribution modeling, although biotic interactions are known to affect species’ spatial distributions via mechanisms such as predation, competition, and mutualism. Biotic interactions can affect species’ responses to abiotic environmental changes differently along environmental gradients, and abiotic environmental changes can likewise influence the nature of biotic interactions. Understanding whether and how to integrate variables at different scales in ecological niche models is essential to better estimate spatial distributions of species on macroecological scales and their responses to change. We report the leaf beetle Eurypedus nigrosignatus as an alien species in the Dominican Republic and investigate whether biotic factors played a meaningful role in the distributional expansion of the species into the Caribbean. We evaluate ecological niche models built with an additive gradient of unlinked biotic predictors—host plants, using likelihood-based model evaluation criteria (Akaike information criterion and Bayesian information criterion) within a range of regularization multiplier parameter values. Our results support the argument that ecological niche models should be more inclusive, as selected biotic predictors can improve the performance of models, despite the increased model complexity, and show that biotic interactions matter at macroecological scales. Moreover, we provide an alternative approach to select optimal combination of relevant variables, to improve estimation of potential invasive areas using global minimum model likelihood scores.

Increasing reality of species distribution models of consumers by including its food resources

“…We suggest an integrative approach for SDMs which include biotic and climatic predictors, as indicated by other authors (Palacio and Girini 2018;Simoes and Peterson 2018). Our results also highlight that SDMs applied without a biological purpose do not make sense.…”

“…Even so, inventories are not usually done simultaneously by researchers from different groups and we then raised the possibility that results highlight the importance of knowing the biology of the modelled species. Notwithstanding the controversy of considering biotic predictors as determinant in species distribution, this seems to be a pattern corroborated by several studies (Meier et al 2011;Meineri et al 2012;Araújo and Rozenfeld 2013;Giannini et al 2013;Palacio and Girini 2018;Simoes and Peterson 2018). Such a pattern seems to repeat itself especially for endotherms, since the distribution of ectotherms may be directly related to climate conditions instead of biotic interactions, and the addition of biotic predictors may increase model complexity and decrease model performance (Engler et al 2013), unless species have a strong biotic interaction.…”

Ecological niche models of biotic interactions predict increasing pest risk to olive cultivars with changing climate

“…2013, Atauchi et al. 2018, Simões and Peterson 2018, Bebber and Gurr 2019). Some studies have underlined the importance of including biotic factors in model calibration, although over interpretation of data is a concern, without denying the possibility that biotic interactions may increase the accuracy of niche model results (Dormann et al.…”

“…Moving from single-species models to multispecies models by including biotic interaction perspectives may provide additional important information about direct versus indirect roles of biotic interactions and thus illuminates the processes involved still more (Dormann et al 2018). Previous studies have indicated that ecological niche models improve when biotic interactions among species are incorporated (Ara ujo and Luoto 2007, Giannini et al 2013, Atauchi et al 2018, Simões and Peterson 2018, Bebber and Gurr 2019. Some studies have underlined the importance of including biotic factors in model calibration, although over interpretation of data is a concern, without denying the possibility that biotic interactions may increase the accuracy of niche model results (Dormann et al 2018).…”

“…We evaluated geographic relationships between the olive host and the fly parasite in Africa and the Mediterranean region in relation to impacts of climate change, using ecological niche modeling approaches. Host and parasite distributional dependencies were evaluated by means of comparisons of ecological niche models including and excluding the potential interactor species (Ara ujo et al 2014, Atauchi et al 2018, Simões and Peterson 2018.…”