Diversity 2013, 5(2), 393-408; doi:10.3390/d5020393
Effects of Dispersal-Related Factors on Species Distribution Model Accuracy for Boreal Lake Ecosystems
1
Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Box 7050, Uppsala, SE-750 07, Sweden
2
Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Vejlsøvej 25, P.O. Box 314, 8600 Silkeborg, Denmark
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 1 April 2013 / Revised: 6 May 2013 / Accepted: 21 May 2013 / Published: 31 May 2013
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biogeography and Biodiversity Conservation)
Abstract
Species distribution modeling is used in applied ecology; for example in predicting the consequences of global change. However, questions still remain about the robustness of model predictions. Here we estimate effects of landscape spatial configuration and organism flight ability—factors related to dispersal—on the accuracy of species distribution models. Distribution models were developed for 129 phytoplankton taxa, 164 littoral invertebrate taxa and 44 profundal invertebrate taxa sampled in 105 Swedish lakes, using six different modeling techniques (generalized linear models (GLM), multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), classification tree analysis (CTA), mixture discriminant analysis (MDA), generalized boosting models (GBM) and random forests (RF)). Model accuracy was not affected by dispersal ability (i.e., invertebrate flight ability), but the accuracy of phytoplankton assemblage predictions and, to a lesser extent, littoral invertebrate assemblages were related to ecosystem size and connectivity. Although no general pattern across species or spatial configuration was evident from our study, we recommend that dispersal and spatial configuration of ecosystems should be considered when developing species distribution models. View Full-TextKeywords:
colonization; connectivity; dispersal; freshwater; invertebrates; phytoplankton; species distribution models
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0).
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MDPI and ACS Style
Hallstan, S.; Johnson, R.K.; Sandin, L. Effects of Dispersal-Related Factors on Species Distribution Model Accuracy for Boreal Lake Ecosystems. Diversity 2013, 5, 393-408.
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