Ecological Niche Models

Ecological niche models (ENMs) are used to predict the geographic range of a species from occurrence (presence; or presence/absence) records and environmental data layers. Such models are used in conservation, macro-ecology, and evolution. There is a selected papers and a software section.

Selected papers

   Ecological Niches

• Austin, M.P., 2002. Spatial prediction of species distribution: an interface between ecological theory and statistical modeling. Ecological Modelling 157: 101-118.
• Pulliam, H.R., 2000. On the relationship between niche and distribution Ecology Letters 3: 349-361

   General modeling papers

• Fielding, A.H. and  J.F. Bell, 1997. A review of methods for the assessment of prediction errors in conservation presence/absence models. Environmental Conservation 24: 38–49.
• Guisan, A., N. E. Zimmermann, 2000. Predictive habitat distribution models in ecology. Ecological Modelling 135: 147-186.
• Pearson, R.G. and T.P. Dawson, 2003. Predicting the impacts of climate change on the distribution of species: are bioclimatic envelope models useful? Global Ecology and Biogeography 12: 361-371.

  Specific modeling approaches

• Lehmann, A., J. McC. Overton, J.R. Leathwick, 2002. GRASP: generalized regression analysis and spatial prediction. Ecological Modeling 157: 189-207

   Applied papers

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Software

• BIOCLIM, implement in DIVA-GIS (free), or in ANUCLIM ($)
• DOMAIN, implemented in DIVA-GIS, or as a stand alone*
• GARP*
• GRASP* (general additive models), implementations for S-plus and R
• MAXENT*

* these implementations do not have mapping functionality. You can use these programs together with e.g., DIVA-GIS (free), Idrisi ($), or ArcView + spatial analyst ($$$) to prepare the data and map the results.

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