Ecological niche models for American black bear, Rafinesque's big-eared bat, and timber rattlesnake

This data set contains rasters that are predictive environmental suitability maps for three wildlife species: the American black bear (Ursus americanus), Rafinesque's big-eared bat (Corynorhinus rafinesquii), and Timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus). Rasters for each species include: individual prediction maps for each of 5 ENMs (GBM: generalized boosting model, GLM: generalized linear model, MARS: multivariate adaptive regression spline, MX: maximum entropy, and RF: random forest), as well as the ensemble prediction map from all five ecological niche models (ENMs).

Methods
The ENMs were created using the Biomod package in R. Input data included occurrence points for each species, along with environmental variables from recent land cover and climate data sets. Individual models were created via the five algorithms (GBM, GLM, MARS, MX, and RF) and then averaged to produce the ensemble ENM. The ensemble models were used to map habitat cores and least cost paths between cores for the three focal species. Least cost paths are posted here: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.z8w9ghx85

For more information on the purpose of these data and the methods used to create them, see:

Costanza et al. Preserving connectivity under climate and land-use change: no one-size-fits-all approach for focal species in similar habitats. Biological Conservation.