Potential sources of time lags in calibrating species distribution models

The Anthropocene is characterized by a rapid pace of environmental change and is causing a multitude of biotic responses, including those that affect the spatial distribution of species. Lagged responses are frequent and species distributions and assemblages are consequently pushed into a disequilibrium state. How the characteristics of environmental change—for example, gradual ‘press’ disturbances such as rising temperatures due to climate change versus infrequent ‘pulse’ disturbances such as extreme events—affect the magnitude of responses and the relaxation times of biota has been insufficiently explored. It is also not well understood how widely used approaches to assess or project the responses of species to changing environmental conditions can deal with time lags. It, therefore, remains unclear to what extent time lags in species distributions are accounted for in biodiversity assessments, scenarios and models; this has ramifications for policymaking and conservation science alike. This perspective piece reflects on lagged species responses to environmental change and discusses the potential consequences for species distribution models (SDMs), the tools of choice in biodiversity modelling. We suggest ways to better account for time lags in calibrating these models and to reduce their leverage effects in projections for improved biodiversity science and policy.

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  Journal of Biogeography

• Publication date

  2023-09-28

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/jbi.14726PMID 38515765PMCID 10952696
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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