Modeling the distribution of a wide-ranging invasive species using the sampling efforts of expert and citizen scientists.

ABSTRACT: In its invasive range in Australia, the European rabbit threatens the persistence of native flora and fauna and damages agricultural production. Understanding its distribution and ecological niche is critical for developing management plans to reduce populations and avoid further biodiversity and economic losses.We developed an ensemble of species distribution models (SDMs) to determine the geographic range limits and habitat suitability of the rabbit in Australia. We examined the advantage of incorporating data collected by citizens (separately and jointly with expert data) and explored issues of spatial biases in occurrence data by implementing different approaches to generate pseudo-absences. We evaluated the skill of our model using three approaches: cross-validation, out-of-region val

SUBMITTER: Roy-Dufresne E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6802020 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature