Data from: Do ecological niche models accurately identify climatic determinants of species ranges?

Defining species’ niches is central to understanding their distributions
and is thus fundamental to basic ecology and climate change projections.
Ecological niche models (ENMs) are a key component of making accurate
projections and include descriptions of the niche in terms of both
response curves and rankings of variable importance. In this study, we
evaluate Maxent’s ranking of environmental variables based on their
importance in delimiting species’ range boundaries by asking whether these
same variables also govern annual recruitment based on long-term
demographic studies. We found that Maxent-based assessments of variable
importance in setting range boundaries in the California tiger salamander
(Ambystoma californiense; CTS) correlate very well with how important
those variables are in governing ongoing recruitment of CTS at the
population level. This strong correlation suggests that Maxent’s ranking
of variable importance captures biologically realistic assessments of
factors governing population persistence. However, this result holds only
when Maxent models are built using best-practice procedures and variables
are ranked based on permutation importance. Our study highlights the need
for building high-quality niche models and provides encouraging evidence
that when such models are built, they can reflect important aspects of a
species’ ecology.