Instructions for the SDM report
A short report on the selected species
Expected:
- Well-structured report with clear sections
- Proper use of citations – (E.g. try Mendeley if you use MS word)
- Use visual examples to justify your decisions!
- Use outcome of MaxEnt
- Use of ArcGIS when necessary to create better maps than MAXENT
Introduction
- What species have you selected?
- What are the main known biological characteristics of the species?
- Why is this species significant? What makes it special?
- How are SDM going to help you investigate this species?
- What is your research question and hypothesis?
- In this section, focus on the ecological and biological aspects of your report
Methodology & Results
- Provide an overview, in the form a flowchart perhaps, of the steps you will perform in
this section to test your research hypothesis
- Occurrence data:
- What are the characteristics of your occurrence data?
- Are there any spatial biases?
- Does it properly reflect the species ecological niche?
- What corrections did you apply to your data?
- Environmental data:
- Which were the final variables you selected and why?
- What were the results of your autocorrelation and multicollinearity tests?
- Model settings
- Which model settings you used and why?
- Model output
- Performance:
- Summarize the performance of the model utilizing the diagnostics of MAXENT
- What was your AUC?
- What do the Response Curves tell about your model?
- Can you identify regions where your model predictions should not be trusted?
- SDM Projections
- Interpret the results of the following scenarios:
- Present World data (if you trained your model in a specific AOI)
- Any future scenario you selected:
- Did the geographical space available for the species increased or decreased?
- Do you reckon the species can reach new locations on its own (if the new space exists)?
Discussion & conclusion
- Do a short discussion of your results and finalize with a summary addressing if your results
are according to your expectations (research questions) and provide some on how to potentially
improve your model or if further research is needed
- Be critical of your results, interpret them in terms of biology and ecology, but also on the
limitations of SDM.