Mechanistic and Correlative Models of Ecological Niches

Mechanistic and Correlative Models of Ecological Niches

2 Department of Integrative Biology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078 USA The suite of factors that drives where and under what conditions a species occurs has become the focus of intense research interest. Three general categories of methods have emerged by which researchers address questions in this area: mechanistic models of species’ requirements in terms of environment...

Ecological Niches and Diversity Maintenance

Why do some places have much higher diversity than others? Explaining patterns of species diversity on the earth is a problem of long-standing for ecologists. Numerous diversity patterns have been documented [1], but the mechanisms behind these patterns remain poorly understood. If we knew the mechanisms, surer decisions in conservation and management would be possible. Understanding can be sou...

How complex should models be? Comparing correlative and mechanistic range dynamics models.

Criticism has been levelled at climate-change-induced forecasts of species range shifts that do not account explicitly for complex population dynamics. The relative importance of such dynamics under climate change is, however, undetermined because direct tests comparing the performance of demographic models vs. simpler ecological niche models are still lacking owing to difficulties in evaluatin...

3 Ecological Niches and Diversity Maintenance

Correlative and mechanistic models of species distribution provide congruent forecasts under climate change

Good forecasts of climate change impacts on extinction risks are critical for effective conservation management responses. Species distribution models (SDMs) are central to extinction risk analyses. The reliability of predictions of SDMs has been questioned because models often lack a mechanistic underpinning and rely on assumptions that are untenable under climate change. We show how integrati...