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Improving species distribution models: the value of data on abundance

Howard, Christine; Stephens, Philip A.; Pearce-Higgins, James W.; Gregory, Richard D.; Willis, Stephen G.

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Authors

Christine Howard

James W. Pearce-Higgins

Richard D. Gregory



Abstract

Species distribution models (SDMs) are important tools for forecasting the potential impacts of future environmental changes but debate remains over the most robust modelling approaches for making projections. Suggested improvements in SDMs vary from algorithmic development through to more mechanistic modelling approaches. Here, we focus on the improvements that can be gained by conditioning SDMs on more detailed data. Specifically, we use breeding bird data from across Europe to compare the relative performances of SDMs trained on presence-absence data and those trained on abundance data. SDMs trained on presence-absence data, with a poor to slight fit according to Cohen's kappa, show an average improvement in model performance of 0.32 (se ±0.12) when trained on abundance data. Even those species for which models trained on presence-absence data are classified as good to excellent show a mean improvement in Cohen's kappa score of 0.05 (se ±0.01) when corresponding SDMs are trained on abundance data. This improved explanatory power is most pronounced for species of high prevalence. Our results illustrate that even using coarse scale abundance data, large improvements in our ability to predict species distributions can be achieved. Furthermore, predictions from abundance models provide a greater depth of information with regard to population dynamics than their presence-absence model counterparts. Currently, despite the existence of a wide variety of abundance data sets, species distribution modellers continue to rely almost exclusively on presence-absence data to train and test SDMs. Given our findings, we advocate that, where available, abundance data rather than presence-absence data can be used to more accurately predict the ecological consequences of environmental change. Additionally, our findings highlight the importance of informative baseline data sets. We therefore recommend the move towards increased collection of abundance data, even if only coarse numerical scales of recording are possible.

Citation

Howard, C., Stephens, P. A., Pearce-Higgins, J. W., Gregory, R. D., & Willis, S. G. (2014). Improving species distribution models: the value of data on abundance. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 5(6), 506-513. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.12184

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 6, 2014
Online Publication Date May 10, 2014
Publication Date Jun 11, 2014
Deposit Date Mar 11, 2014
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 5
Issue 6
Pages 506-513
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.12184
Keywords Species distribution modelling, Ordinal abundance data, Presence-absence data, Random forests, Model performance.

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Accepted Journal Article (319 Kb)
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Copyright Statement
© 2014 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (681 Kb)
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Advance online version


Published Journal Article (Final published version) (1 Mb)
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Final published version





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