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Published on: October 11, 2016
Can mechanism inform species' distribution models?
Lauren B Buckley1, Mark C Urban, Michael J Angilletta
1Department of Biology, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. buckley@bio.unc.edu
Ecology Letters
|May 21, 2010
Summary
Mechanistic models, which link environmental conditions to species performance, predicted larger range shifts under climate change than correlative models. Both approaches similarly predicted current species distributions.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Climate Change Biology
- Biodiversity
Background:
- Predicting species distributions under environmental change is crucial.
- Correlative models use current distributions and environmental data.
- Mechanistic models use organismal performance and environmental data.
Purpose of the Study:
- Compare predictive accuracy of correlative and mechanistic models.
- Assess range shift predictions under climate change for two species.
- Evaluate model flexibility and performance for ecological forecasting.
Main Methods:
- Applied two correlative and three mechanistic models.
- Modeled distributions for a skipper butterfly and a fence lizard.
- Compared predictions of current distributions and climate-driven range shifts.
Main Results:
- Correlative and mechanistic models showed similar accuracy for current distributions.
- Mechanistic models predicted significantly larger range shifts due to climate change.
- Identified potential for improving mechanistic model flexibility and performance.
Conclusions:
- Mechanistic models offer greater insight into climate change impacts on species ranges.
- Model choice influences predictions of future species distributions.
- Further development of mechanistic models is needed for enhanced ecological predictions.
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