A. Townsend Peterson, Jorge Soberón, Richard G. Pearson, Robert P. Anderson, Enrique Martínez-Meyer, Miguel Nakamura, and Miguel Bastos Araújo
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136868
- eISBN:
- 9781400840670
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136868.003.0007
- Subject:
- Biology, Ecology
This chapter explains how environmental data can be used to create models that characterize species’ ecological niches in environmental space. It introduces a model, which is a function constructed ...
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This chapter explains how environmental data can be used to create models that characterize species’ ecological niches in environmental space. It introduces a model, which is a function constructed by means of data analysis for the purpose of approximating the true relationship (that is, the niche) in the form of the function f linking the environment and species occurrences. The chapter first considers the “meaning” of the function f that is being estimated by the algorithms before discussing the modeling algorithms, the approaches used to implement ecological niche modeling, model calibration, model complexity and overfitting, and model extrapolation and transferability. The chapter concludes with an overview of differences among methods and selection of “best” models, along with strategies for characterizing ecological niches in ways that allow visualization, comparisons, definition of quantitative measures, snf more.Less
This chapter explains how environmental data can be used to create models that characterize species’ ecological niches in environmental space. It introduces a model, which is a function constructed by means of data analysis for the purpose of approximating the true relationship (that is, the niche) in the form of the function f linking the environment and species occurrences. The chapter first considers the “meaning” of the function f that is being estimated by the algorithms before discussing the modeling algorithms, the approaches used to implement ecological niche modeling, model calibration, model complexity and overfitting, and model extrapolation and transferability. The chapter concludes with an overview of differences among methods and selection of “best” models, along with strategies for characterizing ecological niches in ways that allow visualization, comparisons, definition of quantitative measures, snf more.
