Implications and alternatives of assigning climate data to geographical centroids

Aim When precise coordinate data for training species distribution models (SDMs) are lacking, climatic variables are often assigned to centroids of geopolitically defined regions, frequently counties. This is problematic because approximations using centroids may not be representative of the regional climate or the locality from where species actually occur, thus leading to spurious conclusions. We evaluated county centroid climate versus simple alternatives for assigning climate to species observations in the absence of precise occurrence data.