The role of climate and species interactions in determining the distribution of two elevationally segregated species of small mammals through time

The relative importance of abiotic and biotic factors in determining species distributions has long been of interest to ecologists but is often difficult to assess due to the lack of spatially and temporally robust occurrence records. Furthermore, locating places where potentially highly competitive species co-occur may be challenging but would provide critical knowledge into the effects of competition on species ranges. We built species distribution models for two closely related species of small mammals (Neotoma) that are largely parapatric along mountainsides throughout the Great Basin Desert, USA using extensive modern occurrence records. We hindcasted these models to the mid-Holocene to compare the response of each species to dramatic climatic change and used paleontological records to validate our models. Model results showed species co-occurrence at mid-elevations along select mountain ranges in this region. We confirmed our model results with fine-scale field surveys in a single..., Occurrence records for species distribution models came from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) (https://www.gbif.org/, accessed January 2022) and VertNet (http://vertnet.org/, accessed January 2022), and data we collected from surveys throughout the Great Basin in the Summer and Fall of 2021. We cropped all records to the Great Basin ecoregion, the boundary of which was obtained from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) database. We constrained records to dates on or after 1950, and with less than or equal to one kilometer coordinate uncertainty to reflect the resolution of the data layers. We used the spatial analysis georeferencing accuracy (SAGA) protocol to georeference data with no recorded coordinate uncertainty (Bloom et al. 2018). We thinned locality data to 1km raster cells.
From April through October 2022, we conducted surveys (24 sites, 6555 trap nights) for woodrats in the southern Snake Range of eastern Nevada.
We also obtained mid-Holocene fossil an..., , # **The role of climate and species interactions in determining the distribution of two elevationally segregated species of small mammals through time**

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mpg4f4r8q](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mpg4f4r8q)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: Neotoma\_data\_dryad.zip

**Description:** Neotomadata.zip file contains 4 .xlsx files that include 2 files (N.cinerea_SDMdata.xlsx, N.lepida_SDMdata.csv) with a total of 547 modern *Neotoma* occurrence records obtained from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and VertNet database, accessed January 2022, 21 mid-Holocene fossil and midden records (Neotoma_paleodata_cite.xlsx) obtained from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database, accessed January 2024, and 188 *Neotoma* records (SnakeRange_Neotomadata_2022.xlsx) obtained from field surveys of the Snake Range of eastern Nevada, April-Oct 2022.

#### Neotoma\_paleodata\_cite.xlsx values are as follows:

Species – of the i...