Table 1.
Four assumptions made in using species distribution models (SDMs) to extrapolate climatic suitability to new regions, how these assumptions are violated, the consequences of violations for model performance and solutions to improve model performance.
Table 2.
Focal species examined in the study.
Table 3.
Performance of Maxent models in predicting climatic suitability in modern (m) or historical (h) native ranges.
Table 4.
Percent contribution (mean ± SD) of six temperature-associated bioclimatic variables1 to Maxent models of climatic suitability.
Table 5.
Percent contribution (mean ± SD) of four precipitation-associated bioclimatic variables2 to Maxent models of climatic suitability.
Figure 1.
Predicted climatic suitability for the Asian elephant and cheetah in North America.
Climatic suitability for the Asian elephant is based on pseudo-presence points from the modern (A) and historical (B) range, and for the cheetah on pseudo-presence points from the modern (C) and historical (D) range. “Climatic suitability” is the average of ten Maxent logistic outputs per species per time period, where blue indicates low suitability and red indicates high suitability. Regions above the MTSS threshold are shown as hashed areas, while regions below the MTP threshold are shown in gray. The proposed introduction areas under the Pleistocene rewilding proposal (the Great Plains and American southwest) are outlined.
Figure 2.
Predicted climatic suitability for the lion and oryx in North America.
Climatic suitability for the lion is based on pseudo-presence points from the modern (A) and historical (B) range, and for the oryx on pseudo-presence points from the modern (C) and historical (D) range. Four localities where oryx have established wild populations are shown as white circles. “Climatic suitability” is the average of ten Maxent logistic outputs per species per time period, where blue indicates low suitability and red indicates high suitability. Regions above the MTSS threshold are shown as hashed areas, while regions below the MTP threshold are shown in gray. The proposed introduction areas under the Pleistocene rewilding proposal (the Great Plains and American southwest) are outlined.
Figure 3.
Plot of isothermality vs. precipitation in the wettest quarter for regions in Africa and North America with and without Oryx gazella.
Isothermality is plotted against the precipitation of the wettest quarter for random points sampled within the native modern oryx range, for random points sampled across Africa and North America and for the four localities where oryx are established in North America.