Expertly validated models and phylogenetically-controlled analysis suggests responses to climate change are related to species traits in the order lagomorpha.

ABSTRACT: Climate change during the past five decades has impacted significantly on natural ecosystems, and the rate of current climate change is of great concern among conservation biologists. Species Distribution Models (SDMs) have been used widely to project changes in species' bioclimatic envelopes under future climate scenarios. Here, we aimed to advance this technique by assessing future changes in the bioclimatic envelopes of an entire mammalian order, the Lagomorpha, using a novel framework for model validation based jointly on subjective expert evaluation and objective model evaluation statistics. SDMs were built using climatic, topographical, and habitat variables for all 87 lagomorph species under past and current climate scenarios. Expert evaluation and Kappa values were used to validate

SUBMITTER: Leach K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4398435 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature