Are we overestimating the niche? Removing marginal localities helps ecological niche models detect environmental barriers.

ABSTRACT: Correlative ecological niche models (ENMs) estimate species niches using occurrence records and environmental data. These tools are valuable to the field of biogeography, where they are commonly used to infer potential connectivity among populations. However, a recent study showed that when locally relevant environmental data are not available, records from patches of suitable habitat protruding into otherwise unsuitable regions (e.g., gallery forests within dry areas) can lead to overestimations of species niches and their potential distributions. Here, we test whether this issue obfuscates detection of an obvious environmental barrier existing in northern Venezuela - that of the hot and xeric lowlands separating the Península de Paraguaná from mainland South America. These conditions mos

SUBMITTER: Soley-Guardia M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4730904 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature