{"id":1278,"date":"2014-07-23T02:51:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T02:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daphnia.ecology.uga.edu\/drakelab\/?p=1278"},"modified":"2014-08-26T02:54:33","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T02:54:33","slug":"ecological-niche-models-fit-to-presence-only-and-presence-absence-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daphnia.ecology.uga.edu\/drakelab\/?p=1278","title":{"rendered":"Ecological niche models fit to presence-only and presence-absence data"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Campanula<\/a>

Campanula barbata<\/p><\/div>\n

The methodology of ecological niche modeling has long been a topic of interest in the lab. A particular challenge has been\u00a0the development of methods that successfully\u00a0draw a boundary around the set of habitable conditions (the fundamental niche) using data only on species occurrences. A new study by Sean Maher, Antoine Guisan, Chris Randin and John Drake looks at a range of modeling approaches that can be fit to either presence-only or presence-absence data. Models were fit to data on 106 species in exhaustively sampled vegetation quadrats in the Swiss Alps. The combination of these data and models enabled a comparison of presence-only and presence-absence modeling approaches that could be independently validated. The upshot: When suitably fit, presence-only models can\u00a0equal the performance of presence-absence models, removing the need for “pseudo-absence” sampling and similar maneuvers needed to shoehorn ecological niche modele into a classification framework.<\/p>\n