Temporal variability is key to modelling the climatic niche

Aim: Niche-based species distribution models (SDMs) have become a ubiquitous tool in ecology and biogeography. These models relate species occurrences with the environmental conditions found at these sites. Climatic variables are the most commonly used environmental data, and are usually included in SDMs as averages of a reference period (30-50 years). In this study we analyze the impact of including inter-annual climatic variability on the estimation of species niches and predicted distributions when assessing plant demographic response to extreme climatic episodes.

Location: Mediterranean basin, SE Iberian Peninsula.

Methods: We first characterized species niches with inter-annual and average climate in the same environmental space. We then compare the respective capacities of climatic suitability obtained from averaged climate-based and from inter-annual variability-based niches to explain population demographic responses to extreme drought. Furthermore, we assessed the relativ...