BACKGROUND The temperature in arid Eastern Central Asia is projected to increase in the future, accompanied by increased variability of precipitation. To investigate the impacts of climate change on plant species in this area, we selected two widespread species as candidates, Clematis sibirica and C. songorica, from montane coniferous forest and arid steppe habitats respectively. METHODOLOGY/...

Species distribution models (SDM) link species occurrence with a suite of environmental predictors and provide an estimate of habitat quality when the variable set captures the biological requirements of the species. SDMs are inherently more complex when they include components of a species' ecology such as conspecific attraction and behavioral flexibility to exploit resources that vary across ...

Future climate change is predicted to advance faster than the postglacial warming. Migration may therefore become a key driver for future development of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. For 140 European plant species we computed past range shifts since the last glacial maximum and future range shifts for a variety of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios and global c...

Species distribution modelling is a common tool in conservation biology but two main criticisms remain: (1) the use of simplistic variables that do not account for species movements and/or connectivity and (2) poor consideration multi-scale processes driving distributions. We aimed to determine if including fine-scale movement SDM predictors would improve accuracy low-mobility amphibian compare...

Ensemble forecasting is advocated as a way of reducing uncertainty in species distribution modeling (SDM). This is because it is expected to balance accuracy and robustness of SDM models. However, there are little available data regarding the spatial similarity of the combined distribution maps generated by different consensus approaches. Here, using eight niche-based models, nine split-sample ...

Human infrastructures can modify ecosystems, thereby affecting the occurrence and spatial distribution of organisms, as well as ecosystem functionality. Sustainable development requires the ability to predict responses of species to anthropogenic pressures. We investigated the large scale, long term effect of important human alterations of benthic habitats with an integrated approach combining ...

Invasive plants are an increasing threat to global biodiversity. Effective management depends on accurate predictions of their spread. However, modelling the geographic distribution invasive species, particularly with correlative species models (SDMs), is challenging. SDMs assume that in equilibrium environment (i.e. they occur all suitable environments); this assumption likely be violated for ...

Common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) occur throughout much of South America to northern México. Vampire bats have not been documented in recent history in the United States, but have been documented within about 50 km of the U.S. state of Texas. Vampire bats feed regularly on the blood of mammals and can transmit rabies virus to native species and livestock, causing impacts on the health of ...

Conservation planners often wish to predict how species distributions will change in response to environmental changes. Species distribution models (SDMs) are the primary tool for making such predictions. Many methods are widely used; however, they all make simplifying assumptions, and predictions can therefore be subject to high uncertainty. With global change well underway, field records of o...