1. It is difficult to establish conservation priorities for cryptic species when their ecological requirements are confounded by problems with species identification. In some cases, such as Chiroptera, cryptic taxa may actually consist of both widespread, abundant species and localized, rare species. Discrimination between these species may be facilitated by phenotypic, species-specific traits ...

Growth in the publication of scientific articles is occurring at an exponential rate, prompting a growing need to synthesise information in a timely manner to combat urgent environmental problems and guide future research. Here, we undertake a topic analysis of dryland literature over the last 75 years (8218 articles) to identify areas in arid ecology that are well studied and topics that are e...

Habitat suitability models can be generated using methods requiring information on species presence or species presence and absence. Knowledge of the predictive performance of such methods becomes a critical issue to establish their optimal scope of application for mapping current species distributions under different constraints. Here, we use breeding bird atlas data in Catalonia as a working ...

Introduction of Macrobrachium rosenbergii to Brazil for prawn farming has resulted in escapes to the local natural environment. In some areas risk of feral populations establishing in local environments is considered low due to a lack of suitable habitat for completing the life cycle. In contrast, introduction of this species along the mangrove coasts of northern Brazil can result in escape to ...

Figure 1: Principle of habitat modelling: sampling of species distribution data (here: presence-absence data) and selected predictor variables; estimating an empirical, predictive model (in this case: by logistic regression a generalised linear model for binary response variables, other, more flexible approaches are generalised additive models, classification and regression trees, artificial ne...

Mapping disease transmission risk is crucial in public and animal health for evidence based decision-making. Ecology and epidemiology are highly related disciplines that may contribute to improvements in mapping disease, which can be used to answer health related questions. Ecological niche modeling is increasingly used for understanding the biogeography of diseases in plants, animals, and huma...

Recent advances allow harnessing enormous stores of biological and environmental data to model species niches and geographic distributions. Natural history museums hold specimens that represent the only information available for most species. Ecological niche models (sometimes termed species distribution models) combine such information with digital environmental data (especially climatic) to o...

Abstract Niche construction theory (NCT) aims to transform and unite evolutionary biology ecology. Much of the debate about NCT has focused on construction. Less attention been accorded niche: what is it, exactly, that organisms are constructing? In this paper I compare contrast definition niche used in with ecological definitions. NCT’s concept defined as sum selection pressures affecting a po...

Introduction: A strong positive ‘abundance and habitat-suitability’ relationship is crucial for conservation of species. Nevertheless, anthropogenic alteration of natural landscapes leading to land use and land cover change, habitat loss, and species extinctions (may) have putatively disturbed this relationship. Hence, it is important to study the nature of the relationship in such human influe...

Identifying the factors that infl uence geographic range limits can illustrate the various ecological, physiological, and evolutionary constraints imposed on a species. Th e range limits of migratory birds are particularly challenging to study as they occur in disjunct regions at diff erent times of the year, which can impose diff erent constraints. Travel between breeding and wintering regions...