How well do species distribution models predict parameters of interest in population biology?

Background/Question/Methods

Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology. In theory, SDMs capture (at least part of) species’ ecological niches and can be used to make inferences about the distribution of suitable habitat for species of interest. Because habitat suitability is expected to influence population demography, SDMs have been used to estimate a variety of population parameters, from occurrence to genetic diversity. However, a critical look at the ability of SDMs to predict independent data across different aspects of population biology is lacking. We systematically reviewed studies testing predictions from SDMs against independent assessments of occurrence, abundance, population performance, and genetic diversity to test the accuracy of these models for different purposes.

Results/Conclusions

We retrieved 201 studies testing SDMs with independent data. Although there is some support for the ability of SDMs to predict occurrence (~53% of studies depending on how support was assessed), the predictive performance of these models declined progressively from occurrence to abundance, to population mean fitness, to genetic diversity. At the same time, we observed higher success among studies that evaluated performance for single versus multiple species, pointing to a possible publication bias. Thus, the limited accuracy of SDMs reported here may reflect the best-case scenario. This talk will discuss these results and the implications for use of these models in ecology and conservation biology.