Evaluating the capacity of species distribution modeling to predict the geographic distribution of the mangrove community in Mexico

Mangroves are highly productive ecosystems that provide important environmental services, but have been impacted massively in recent years by human activities. Studies of mangroves have focused on their ecology and function at local or landscape scales, but little has been done to understand their broader distributional patterns or the environmental factors that determine those distributions. Species distribution models (SDMs), have been used to estimate potential distributions of hundreds of species, yet no SDM studies to date have assessed mangrove community distributions in Mexico (the country with the fourth largest extent of this ecosystem). We used maximum entropy approaches to model environmental suitability for mangrove species distributions in the country, and to identify the environmental factors most important in determining those distributions. We also evaluated whether this modeling approach is adequate to estimate mangrove distribution as a community across Mexico. Best models were selected based on statistical significance (AUC ratio), predictive performance (omission error of 5%), and model complexity (Akaike criterion); after this evaluation, only one model per species met the three evaluation criteria. Environmental variable sets that included distance to coast yielded significantly better models; variables with strongest contributions included elevation, temperature of the coldest month, and organic carbon content of soil. Based on our results, we conclude that SDMs can be used to map mangrove communities in Mexico, but that results can be improved at local scales with inclusion of local variables (salinity, hydroperiod and microtopography), field validations, and remote sensing data.