1. Introduction to Niche Modelling
Many thanks to Robert Guralnick for various slide content

2. What is an ecological niche?
Two parts: Fundamental niche and Realized niche
The full range of
conditions under
which an animal
could exist

3. What is an ecological niche?
Two parts: Fundamental niche and Realized niche
The portion of the
fundamental niche
that the organism
comes to actually
occupy due to all
limiting factors

4. What is an ecological niche?
Two parts: Fundamental niche and Realized niche
The portion of the
fundamental niche that the
organism actually occupies
due to all limiting factors

5. What is it in detail?
Circle A represents area
where abiotic conditions are
right for a species to occur (Ga)
Circle B represent the area
where lack of competition,
disease, and occurrence of
mutualists allows populations
to grow.
Circle M is area within which individuals & populations are
capable of moving due to lack of dispersal barriers.
Go is occupied area, Gi is invadable area From Soberon and Peterson

6. What is niche modelling?
An attempt to sample a
wide range of
ecological variables
that could describe the
presence of a point
occurrence, develop a
model that describes
the relationship, and
predict the
fundamental niche of
the organism

7. What is niche modelling?

8. Why do we use niche modelling?
Our samples of this
Montane Vole are only
directly tell us point
information about the
existance of the vole.
So we need a method
to predict the space
the vole can or could
occupy
GBIF point data for the Montane vole and an IUCN Red List range map

9. Este es el mismo mapa con muchos mas puntos de donde se
encuentra ese bicho en Europa

10. Summer precipitation Winter precipitation
Plano de condiciones ambientales
Maximum temp. summer Average elevation

11. Plano de distribución potencial de la especie

12. Ocurrence data,
specimen-observation
data
+
Environmental layers
+
Modelling algorithm
=
Distribution models

13. Where does the data come from?
Presence data - species occurrences
1. Museum collections
2. Observation networks
3. Species inventories (also absence)
Ecological data
1. Remote sensing, land cover measurements
2. Weather stations
3. Climate projections
4. Habitat preference profiles
Algorithms
1. Handful of common methods, see class wiki

14. What has made it more common?
Advances in algorithmic methods
Availability of worldwide environmental data
Improvements in GIS technology

15. What does niche modelling provide?
Historical projections
Waltari et al., 2007

16. What does niche modelling provide?
Present day
projections

17. Future projections

18. What does niche modelling provide?
More future projections