What is the best bioclimatic database for plant niche modeling?

[Rilquer Mascarenhas]

Hi, everyone. I'm a grad student in Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, and I currently work with evoltuionary biogeography and macroecology. I'll begin working with a species of plant from South America, with niche modeling and comparison, and I was wondering if anyone would have advices on which bioclimatic variables and which bioclimatic database (WorldClim, ecoClimate, CRU CL, etc.) are more adequate, or are more usually used, for plant niche modeling. Also, which kind of non-bioclimatic variables (e.g., soil pH, pollinators distribution, etc) is usually used with plants? I would really appreciate if anyone could help me.

Thanks.

[Lauren Yee]

WorldClim seems very popular with Maxent. Are you using R or what type of software?
For plant niche modelling you should really be reading the scientific literature to figure out what is important to the species you are studying - tailor your environmental variables from there.

[Jennifer Pannell]

I second Lauren's point - the best variables will depend a lot on your species' traits, and also the question you are trying to answer. I had a look at ecoClimate - that seems to be the same 19 Worldclim variables but for future and past scenarios, while CRU CL is a coarser resolution. Probably a major reason that Worldclim is so popular is that it's the finest resolution global climate data available. So your choice of variables will also be partly determined by how fine you want your model to be, and whether you need global data or just for a country or region. If you're not so worried about having coarser grids, you might also consider the 40 bioclim variables available from Climond. Hope that helps a little!

[Steve Research]

Hi Rilquer,

Most of the literature points to using less complex models wherever possible. 

One way of trying to look at which layers to use is to start with for example the 19 WorldClim layers and run Maxent with the 'jackknife' option checked. If you are looking at a large area it can be slow! I think my longest run was 8.5 hours! 

This will help you understand how the variables work with your species and assist in making your selection. However you also need to use your understanding of your species!

Cheers

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

On 11 Jul 2016, at 20:25, Rilquer Mascarenhas <rilq...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, everyone. I'm a grad student in Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, and I currently work with evoltuionary biogeography and macroecology. I'll begin working with a species of plant from South America, with niche modeling and comparison, and I was wondering if anyone would have advices on which bioclimatic variables and which bioclimatic database (WorldClim, ecoClimate, CRU CL, etc.) are more adequate, or are more usually used, for plant niche modeling. Also, which kind of non-bioclimatic variables (e.g., soil pH, pollinators distribution, etc) is usually used with plants? I would really appreciate if anyone could help me.

Thanks.

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