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Maxent-directed field surveys identify new populations of narrowly endemic habitat specialists

BACKGROUND: Rare or narrowly endemic organisms are difficult to monitor and conserve when their total distribution and habitat preferences are incompletely known. One method employed in determining distributions of these organisms is species distribution modeling (SDM). METHODS: Using two species of...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Rhoden, Cody M., Peterman, William E., Taylor, Christopher A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541929/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28785520
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3632
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author Rhoden, Cody M.
Peterman, William E.
Taylor, Christopher A.
author_facet Rhoden, Cody M.
Peterman, William E.
Taylor, Christopher A.
author_sort Rhoden, Cody M.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Rare or narrowly endemic organisms are difficult to monitor and conserve when their total distribution and habitat preferences are incompletely known. One method employed in determining distributions of these organisms is species distribution modeling (SDM). METHODS: Using two species of narrowly endemic burrowing crayfish species as our study organisms, we sought to ground validate Maxent, a commonly used program to conduct SDMs. We used fine scale (30 m) resolution rasters of pertinent habitat variables collected from historical museum records in 2014. We then ground validated the Maxent model in 2015 by randomly and equally sampling the output from the model. RESULTS: The Maxent models for both species of crayfish showed positive relationships between predicted relative occurrence rate and crayfish burrow abundance in both a Receiver Operating Characteristic and generalized linear model approach. The ground validation of Maxent led us to new populations and range extensions of both species of crayfish. DISCUSSION: We conclude that Maxent is a suitable tool for the discovery of new populations of narrowly endemic, rare habitat specialists and our technique may be used for other rare, endemic organisms.
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spelling pubmed-55419292017-08-07 Maxent-directed field surveys identify new populations of narrowly endemic habitat specialists Rhoden, Cody M. Peterman, William E. Taylor, Christopher A. PeerJ Biogeography BACKGROUND: Rare or narrowly endemic organisms are difficult to monitor and conserve when their total distribution and habitat preferences are incompletely known. One method employed in determining distributions of these organisms is species distribution modeling (SDM). METHODS: Using two species of narrowly endemic burrowing crayfish species as our study organisms, we sought to ground validate Maxent, a commonly used program to conduct SDMs. We used fine scale (30 m) resolution rasters of pertinent habitat variables collected from historical museum records in 2014. We then ground validated the Maxent model in 2015 by randomly and equally sampling the output from the model. RESULTS: The Maxent models for both species of crayfish showed positive relationships between predicted relative occurrence rate and crayfish burrow abundance in both a Receiver Operating Characteristic and generalized linear model approach. The ground validation of Maxent led us to new populations and range extensions of both species of crayfish. DISCUSSION: We conclude that Maxent is a suitable tool for the discovery of new populations of narrowly endemic, rare habitat specialists and our technique may be used for other rare, endemic organisms. PeerJ Inc. 2017-07-31 /pmc/articles/PMC5541929/ /pubmed/28785520 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3632 Text en ©2017 Rhoden et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biogeography
Rhoden, Cody M.
Peterman, William E.
Taylor, Christopher A.
Maxent-directed field surveys identify new populations of narrowly endemic habitat specialists
title Maxent-directed field surveys identify new populations of narrowly endemic habitat specialists
title_full Maxent-directed field surveys identify new populations of narrowly endemic habitat specialists
title_fullStr Maxent-directed field surveys identify new populations of narrowly endemic habitat specialists
title_full_unstemmed Maxent-directed field surveys identify new populations of narrowly endemic habitat specialists
title_short Maxent-directed field surveys identify new populations of narrowly endemic habitat specialists
title_sort maxent-directed field surveys identify new populations of narrowly endemic habitat specialists
topic Biogeography
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541929/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28785520
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3632
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