Fijian habitat and invertebrate species distribution modelling

Aim
Spatially explicit protections of coastal habitats determined on the current distribution of species and ecosystems risk becoming obsolete in 100 years if the movement of species ranges outpaces management action. Hence, a critical step of conservation is predicting the efficacy of management actions in future. We aimed to determine how foundational, habitat‐building species will respond to climate change in Fiji.
Location
The Republic of Fiji.
Methods
We develop species distribution models (SDMs) using MaxEnt, General Additive Models and Boosted Regression Trees and publicly available data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to predict changes in distribution of suitable habitat for mangrove forests, coral habitat, seagrass meadows and critical fisheries invertebrates under several IPCC climate change scenarios in 2070 or 2100. We then overlay predicted distribution models onto existing Fijian protected area network to assess whether today's conservation measures will..., We sampled mangrove presence points from mangrove global distribution polygons created by Hamilton and Casey (2016) based on estimates from 2000.  Seagrass presence points were downloaded from McKenzie et al. (2021) who thoroughly reviewed the known distribution of seagrass meadows in the Pacific Islands. Coral presence points were sampled from coral reef global distribution polygons created by UNEP-WCMC (2021). Presence points for each taxa were reviewed to eliminate points without a minimum of three decimal places as well as any outliers. Publicly available distribution data on mud crabs (Scylla serrata), ark shells (Anadara antiquata), triton shells (Charonia tritonis), sea cucumbers (Holothuria atra, Bohadschia argus, and Holothuria edulis), and giant clams (including Tridacna gigas, T. maxima, and T. squamosa) were downloaded from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Presences reported on GBIF went through a cleaning process to remove points without latitude and longitude,...,