Niche identity and similar tests

[Simeon Borissov]

Hello all, 

My name is Simeon and I am an early career researcher in Bulgaria. I attended the amazing workshop on Wallace organized by the TIBS several days ago. During the lecture I asked about the 'hypotheses testing for species pairs' (Warren et al. 2008 and 2021). There was not enough time to discuss those side questions during the wonderful workshop, but I would like to ask some questions and collect opinions. 

Those tests were implemented in the early ENMtools Pearl script and were later made available through an R package. One that I am particularly interested in is the niche identity test that takes two closely related species or subspecies and randomizes their occurrence points n times, creating n model replicates on the same environment as a null distribution, then comparing the actual models with that. In my opinion this is  different from the 'ecospat' tools. As an entomologist studying speciation, I am interesting in this niche identity between insect species that are so close and difficult to identify, and sometimes are genetically similar. In those cases there is the question whether those are one species or two. I am curious if those tests are considered and will they be implemented in wallace? Is it only a matter of time and effort or is there a theoretical/technical reason not to use them that I don;t understand? I realize that those tests require computational power as there are 100+ models but they are not impossible. 

Besides,  thanks again to everyone behind the wonderful work on the Wallace app! Sorry for the long message. 

All the best, 

Simeon