What can community ecologists learn from species distribution models?

Abstract

Abstract Species distribution and ecological niche models (SDMs and ENMs) are popular tools used in a wide variety of research and conservation applications. However, their use in understanding community‐level patterns and processes is an emerging and rapidly developing field. Here, we examine a set of important and challenging topics that are central to advancing the field of community ecology where we believe SDMs and ENMs can help in making progress. Topics examined in this review include the prediction of community attributes (e.g., species richness and composition), the detection and estimation of rare species, species abundance patterns, scale dependencies in species–environment relations, biotic interactions, and historical contingencies. We also describe how SDMs can be used to help construct regional species pools and community assembly models that can be used to help address important questions in novel and interesting ways. We expect that greater integration between theoretical advancements in community ecology, local field‐based experimental studies, and coarse‐scale species distribution modeling applications will become a highly productive avenue for moving the field of community ecology forward and for developing more predictive models of community assembly and dynamics.

Keywords

• abundance
• biotic interactions
• community assembly
• environmental niche model
• historical contingency
• rare species