The theory of island biogeography revisited Losos, Jonathan B; Losos, Jonathan B; Ricklefs, Robert E
Princeton University Press eBooks,
2010., 20091019, 2009, 2010-01-01
eBook
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Robert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson's The Theory of Island Biogeography, first published by Princeton in 1967, is one of the most influential books on ecology and evolution to appear in the past ...half century. By developing a general mathematical theory to explain a crucial ecological problem--the regulation of species diversity in island populations--the book transformed the science of biogeography and ecology as a whole. In The Theory of Island Biogeography Revisited, some of today's most prominent biologists assess the continuing impact of MacArthur and Wilson's book four decades after its publication. Following an opening chapter in which Wilson reflects on island biogeography in the 1960s, fifteen chapters evaluate and demonstrate how the field has extended and confirmed--as well as challenged and modified--MacArthur and Wilson's original ideas. Providing a broad picture of the fundamental ways in which the science of island biogeography has been shaped by MacArthur and Wilson's landmark work, The Theory of Island Biogeography Revisited also points the way toward exciting future research.
Maps of species' distributions or habitat suitability are required for many aspects of environmental research, resource management and conservation planning. These include biodiversity assessment, ...reserve design, habitat management and restoration, species and habitat conservation plans and predicting the effects of environmental change on species and ecosystems. The proliferation of methods and uncertainty regarding their effectiveness can be daunting to researchers, resource managers and conservation planners alike. Franklin summarises the methods used in species distribution modeling (also called niche modeling) and presents a framework for spatial prediction of species distributions based on the attributes (space, time, scale) of the data and questions being asked. The framework links theoretical ecological models of species distributions to spatial data on species and environment, and statistical models used for spatial prediction. Providing practical guidelines to students, researchers and practitioners in a broad range of environmental sciences including ecology, geography, conservation biology, and natural resources management.
Aim To explore the impacts of imperfect reference data on the accuracy of species distribution model predictions. The main focus is on impacts of the quality of reference data (labelling accuracy) ...and, to a lesser degree, data quantity (sample size) on species presence-absence modelling. Innovation The paper challenges the common assumption that some popular measures of model accuracy and model predictions are prevalence independent. It highlights how imperfect reference data may impact on a study and the actions that may be taken to address problems. Main conclusions The theoretical independence of prevalence of popular accuracy measures, such as sensitivity, specificity, true skills statistics (TSS) and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), is unlikely to occur in practice due to reference data error; all of these measures of accuracy, together with estimates of species occurrence, showed prevalence dependency arising through the use of a non-gold-standard reference. The number of cases used also had implications for the ability of a study to meet its objectives. Means to reduce the negative effects of imperfect reference data in study design and interpretation are suggested.
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