Paintings predict the distribution of species, or the challenge of selecting environmental predictors and evaluation statistics

Abstract Aim Species distribution modelling, a family of statistical methods that predicts species distributions from a set of occurrences and environmental predictors, is now routinely applied in many macroecological studies. However, the reliability of evaluation metrics usually employed to validate these models remains questioned. Moreover, the emergence of online databases of environmental variables with global coverage, especially climatic, has favoured the use of the same set of standard predictors. Unfortunately, the selection of variables is too rarely based on a careful examination of the species' ecology. In this context, our aim was to highlight the importance of selecting ad hoc variables in…

• IR
  Innovative Research Group Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China
• AL
  Angers Loire Métropole
• ER
  European Regional Development Fund