No species is an island: testing the effects of biotic interactions on models of avian niche occupation
Autor: | Federico Morelli, Piotr Tryjanowski |
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Jazyk: | angličtina |
Rok vydání: | 2015 |
Předmět: |
Ecological niche
Ecology media_common.quotation_subject Species distribution Niche Biology red-backed shrike Competition (biology) Ecological network Environmental niche modelling Avian niche biotic interactions Habitat species association species distribution models Non-trophic networks Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Nature and Landscape Conservation media_common Original Research |
Zdroj: | Ecology and Evolution |
ISSN: | 2045-7758 |
Popis: | Traditionally, the niche of a species is described as a hypothetical 3D space, constituted by well-known biotic interactions (e.g. predation, competition, trophic relationships, resource–consumer interactions, etc.) and various abiotic environmental factors. Species distribution models (SDMs), also called “niche models” and often used to predict wildlife distribution at landscape scale, are typically constructed using abiotic factors with biotic interactions generally been ignored. Here, we compared the goodness of fit of SDMs for red-backed shrike Lanius collurio in farmlands of Western Poland, using both the classical approach (modeled only on environmental variables) and the approach which included also other potentially associated bird species. The potential associations among species were derived from the relevant ecological literature and by a correlation matrix of occurrences. Our findings highlight the importance of including heterospecific interactions in improving our understanding of niche occupation for bird species. We suggest that suite of measures currently used to quantify realized species niches could be improved by also considering the occurrence of certain associated species. Then, an hypothetical “species 1” can use the occurrence of a successfully established individual of “species 2” as indicator or “trace” of the location of available suitable habitat to breed. We hypothesize this kind of biotic interaction as the “heterospecific trace effect” (HTE): an interaction based on the availability and use of “public information” provided by individuals from different species. Finally, we discuss about the incomes of biotic interactions for enhancing the predictive capacities on species distribution models. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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