The Real Task of Selecting Records for Ecological Niche Modelling

Abstract

Biological collections evoke contrasting feelings for being such a vast source of biodiversity data which is prone to all sorts of errors and uncertainties. The situation is not different for Brazilian herbaria, currently sharing more than two million easily accessible records on the Web. Properly dealing with this reality is a crucial task when using this kind of data for ecological niche modelling (ENM), so that errors and uncertainties do not generate misleading results in conservation. Here we investigate some of the issues that can be found in herbarium specimen data, describing a set of automatic procedures that can be used for a prior selection of records for ENM. In total, 11531 records for 135 species of Passifloraceae that natively occur in Brazil were analyzed considering different spatial resolutions, ranging from 30 arc-seconds to 10 arc-minutes. After applying the procedures, the proportion of spatially unique records was 9.3% for the highest resolution considering all species, with an average number of 8 records selected per species. These numbers increased to 17% and 16, respectively, for all other resolutions. This scenario highlights the importance of using data quality filters and further developing ENM presence-only methods that can work with a low number of records per species. Automatic procedures still cannot discard expert review, but they can greatly facilitate it by drawing attention to a much smaller number of records potentially useful for ENM. Most of the data quality procedures described here can also be applied to other taxonomic groups, regions and specimen data sources.

Evaluating, partitioning, and mapping the spatial autocorrelation component in ecological niche modeling: a new approach based on environmentally equidistant records

“…All records were examined for species-name's synonymies and nomenclature errors (Giovanni et al 2012). unb.br/ ), 'JABOT -Banco de Dados da Flora Brasileira' (JBRJ 2012), and Species Link ( http://splink.cria.org.…”

“…br/ ). All records were examined for species-name's synonymies and nomenclature errors (Giovanni et al 2012). We sampled absence points from background region (i.e.…”

Areas of climate stability of species ranges in the Brazilian Cerrado: disentangling uncertainties through time

“…We selected 18 tree species based on their high floristic importance in the Cerrado biome (Ratter et al 2003) and that are target to population genetic analyses in the GENPAC research network (see acknowledgments Using a grid of 0.5° × 0.5° of latitude and longitude, we modeled species niche and projected distributions across the entire Neotropical region, because some species' occurrence extrapolates the limits of the Cerrado biome (see Table S1, in Additional Supporting Information available at www.abeco.org.br, for the list of species, number of records and sources of occurrence data -see also Giovanni et al (2012) for procedures used to select records from these databases). We obtained the climate layers and characterized the environmental space for ENMs using climatic simulations from pre-industrial (representing current climate conditions), Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 21,000 years ago -21 ky BP) and future (2080-2100, 20-year mean; hereafter 'end-of-century' -EOC), derived from four coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCM) -CCSM4, GISS-E2-R, MIROC-ESM and MRI-CGCM3.…”

Conservation biogeography of the Cerrado's wild edible plants under climate change: Linking biotic stability with agricultural expansion

“…Species records were compiled from the following online museum collections: Florescer (Flora Integrada da Região Centro‐Oeste, http://www.florescer.unb.br), JABOT–Banco de dados da Flora Brasileira (JBRJ, 2012, and Species Link (CRIA, 2014). All records were examined for synonymies and nomenclature errors (Giovanni et al, 2012).…”