Interested in using species distribution models? Need to estimate climatic niche overlap between sister species? Wanting to examine historical phenology using herbarium records? Research possibilities with museum and herbarium data are growing, but first, you need to clean the data. We are pleased to organize a free Webinar on Using Museum and Herbarium Specimen Data …
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Adam promoted to Associate Scientist!
The decimation of Madagascar’s rainforest habitat
It is honestly with sadness that I announce our new publication on the fate of Madagscar’s rainforest habitat in Nature Climate Change. Modeling deforestation assuming the lowest rate of deforestation across the period 2000-2014, I could only get the rainforest to last to the 2070s… and the highest rate of loss occurred in 2018, outside …
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Runner-up in Ecography’s E4 Award!
Our article on formal integration of different lines of biogeographic evidence (genetic, pollen, occurrence) won runner-up in annual Ecography’s E4 Award! Hoban, S., Dawson, A. Robinson, J., Smith, A.B., Strand, A. 2019. Inference of biogeographic history by formally integrating distinct lines of evidence: genetic, environmental niche, and fossil. Ecography 42:1991-2011. (open access)
Cover story!!!
Climate coherency
After many long years of battling data bottlenecks, I am ecstatic to announce the publication of our paper on intraspecific variation in responses of pikas to climate change. To our great surprise, dividing the range by ecoregions–not genetic lineages–best captures observed differences in how the species responded to 20 mechanistic climatic variables. Many thanks to …
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How well do species distribution models measure variable importance?
One of the most common applications of SDMs is to identify important variables and measure their relative effect. Despite hundreds of papers assessing the predictive power of SDMs, there are none assessing their inferential power. Maria Santos and Adam recently completed the first such analysis! Smith, A.B. and Santos, M.J. Testing the ability of species …
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Welcome, David Henderson!
We are happy to host David Henderson as part of his rotation at Washington University in St. Louis during the spring semester of 2019! David is interested in understanding biogeographic patterns using herbarium records. Many records are only “vaguely” georeferenced (i.e., to a county or similar political unit). Vague records can represent 40% or more …
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Prairie Zen
Local adaptation in a foundational grass “Prairie Zen” is the feeling one gets when gazing out across the endless grasslands of the Great Plains. But the endlessness belies sharp gradients in genetic and phenotypic diversity within Big Bluestem, the dominant grass of the region. Now out: Matt Galliart’s paper on local adaptation in this foundational …
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Niche estimation above and below the species level
If ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,’ then why model species as if they appeared through spontaneous creation? Now out: our paper on estimating niches while accounting for intra- and interspecific evolution! Smith, A.B., Godsoe, W., Rodríguez-Sánchez, F., Wang, H-H., and Warren, D. 2019. Niche estimation above and below the …
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