Accurate predictions of the impacts of future land use change on species of conservation concern can help to inform policy-makers and improve conservation measures. If predictions are spatially explicit, predicted consequences of likely land use changes could be accessible to land managers at a scale relevant to their working landscape. We introduce a method, based on open source software, whic...

Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4RY, UK, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Tinbergen Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK, United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, CB3 0DL, UK, Microsoft Research Computational Science Laboratory, Cambridge, CB3 0FB, UK, School of Ocean Sciences, Bang...

Detailed large-scale information on mammal distribution has often been lacking, hindering conservation efforts. We used the information from the 2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as a baseline for developing habitat suitability models for 5027 out of 5330 known terrestrial mammal species, based on their habitat relationships. We focused on the following environmental variables: land cove...

1. The concept of the ecological niche relates a set of environmental variables to the fitness of species, while habitat suitability models (HSMs) relate environmental variables to the likelihood of occurrence of the species. In spite of this relationship, the concepts are weakly linked in the literature, and there is a strong need for better integration. 2. We selectively reviewed the literatu...

1.Predicting the current and potential distributions of established invasive species is critical for evaluating management options, but methods for differentiating these distributions have received little attention. In particular, there is uncertainty among invasive species managers about the value of information from incidental sightings compared to data from designed field surveys. This study...

Individuals along the periphery of a species distribution regularly encounter more challenging environmental and climatic conditions than conspecifics near the center of the distribution. Due to these potential constraints, individuals in peripheral margins are expected to change their habitat and behavioral characteristics. Managers typically rely on species distribution maps when developing a...

In conservation biology there is a basic need to determine habitat suitability and availability. Astroblepus ubidiai (Siluriforms), the only native fish in the highlands of Imbabura province in the Ecuadorian Andes, was abundant in the past in the Imbakucha watershed and adjacent drainages, but currently it is restricted to a few isolated refuges. Conservation actions are needed if this unique ...

Prioritizing areas for management of non-native invasive plants is critical, as invasive plants can negatively impact plant community structure. Extensive and multi-jurisdictional inventories are essential to prioritize actions aimed at mitigating the impact of invasions and changes in disturbance regimes. However, previous work devoted little effort to devising sampling methods sufficient to a...

This paper compares two habitat-suitability assessing methods, the Ecological Niche Factor Analysis (ENFA) and the Generalised Linear Model (GLM), to see how well they cope with three different scenarios. The main difference between these two analyses is that GLM is based on species presence/absence data while ENFA on presence data only. A virtual species was created and then dispatched in a ge...