Species distributions and habitat suitability

The very pillars of biogeography, going back to McArthur and Wilson, are cemented upon demographic processes (e.g. invasion and extinction). However, most current models attempting to describe where species are found, and where they may shift towards, geographically, do not incorporate demographic information. Importantly, some of these latter tools, such as species distribution models (SDMs) have been criticised for being highly environmentally correlational and being prone to mistakes due to their reliance on presence-only data and detectability issues.

The SalGo team is developing methods to incorporate demographic information, both from big-data databases, as well as from individually collected sites, to build more robust spatially explicit predictions of species distributions.

 

workflow for integral projection models ipms merow et al 2014 mee
sampled locations of the carnivorous plant species drosophyllum lusitanicum in the iberian peninsula paniw et al 2015 biol cons

SalGo team members:

  • Simran Aujla
  • Erik Kusch
  • Sam Levin
  • Laura Merritt
  • Rob Salguero-Gómez
  • Emily Seccombe

 

Selected collaborators:

Selected publications:

Holden M, Jian Y, Briscoe N, Lahoz-Monfort J, Salguero-Gómez R, Peter V, Guillera-Arroita G. In press. Assessing the accuracy of density-independent demographic models for predicting species ranges. Ecography DOI 10.1111/ecog.05250

Briscoe N, Elith J, Salguero-Gómez R, Lahoz-Monfort J, Camac J, Giljohann K, Holden M, Hradsky B, McMahon S, Phillips B, Regan T, Rhodes J, Vesk P, Wintle B, Yen J, Guillera-Arroita G. 2019. Processexplicit models of species range dynamics: matching potential to need. Ecology Letters, DOi.org/10.1111/ele.13348

Csergõ A, Salguero-Gómez R, Broennimann O, Coutts S, Angert A, Welk E, McGill B, Svenning JC, Violle C, Enquist B, Guisan A & Buckley Y. 2017. Less favourable climates constraint demographic strategies in plants. Ecology Letters 20, 969-980, DOI: 10.1111/ele.12794

Paniw M, Quintana-Ascencio PF, Ojeda F & Salguero-Gómez R. 2017. Interacting livestock and fire may both threaten and increase viability of a fire-adapted Mediterranean carnivorous subshrub. Journal of Applied Ecology 54, 1884-1894. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12872