Please join us for a seminar talk by Dr. Dan Warren.

Building Better Species Distribution Models by Modeling Nonsense and Imaginary Creatures

Abstract

Species distribution models (SDMs) are used to estimate organisms’ climate niches and potential distributions. They are one of the most widely used tools in studying many of the most critical ecological questions of the modern era including the effects of climate change on threatened species, the spread of invasive species, and the spread of vector-borne diseases. However, many uncertainties remain about how to build and evaluate models and what, if any, biological processes these models effectively estimate. In this talk I’m going to walk through a few recent studies where colleagues and I have tried to highlight some of the deeper uncertainties in this field by using simulated organisms, random noise, and a citizen science data set on the distribution of Australia’s only endemic Pokémon.

Image Credit to Katerina Zapfe.