Including biotic interactions in species distribution models improves the understanding of species niche: a case of study with the brown bear in Europe

Biotic interactions are expected to influence species’ responses to climate change, but they are usually not included when predicting future range shifts. We assessed the importance of biotic interactions to understand future consequences of climate and land use change for biodiversity using as a model system the brown bear (Ursus arctos) in Europe. By including biotic interactions using the spatial variation of energy contribution and habitat models of each food species, we showed that the use of biotic factors considerably improves our understanding of the distribution of brown bears. Predicted future range shifts, which included changes in the distribution of food species, varied greatly when considering various scenarios of change in biotic factors, warning about future indirect climate change effects. Our study confirmed that advancing our understanding of ecological networks of species interactions will improve future scenarios of biodiversity change, which is key for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services.

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  bioRxiv

• Publication date

  2023-03-12

• Fields of study

  Biology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1101/2023.03.10.532098
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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