Exploring the Abundance-Suitability relationship at large spatial scale

INVITED SEMINAR IN BIODIVERSITY AND EVOLUTION

The prediction of patterns of distribution and abundance of wildlife is essential for the development of effective management and conservation strategies. However, although abundance data offers more information about the state of population in relation to occupancy data, its availability on a large scale is scarce, largely due to the cost and effort to obtain it. Therefore, the exploration of the relationship between the abundance of the species and the occupancy patterns is investigated in order to find an effective surrogate for abundance. From this exploration, a triangular relationship between both of them emerges frequently. The objective of this PhD research is to delve into this relationship, to better understand its drivers, and which information it provides us. In this seminar, I will focus on the work carried out previously and the work that I have planned for my current stay at CIBIO. From previous work, an exploratory study of this triangular relationship has been carried out, using different methodologies and species of animals. The main conclusion obtained was the need to have good abundance data in order to correctly explore this relationship. During this stay at CIBIO, I expect to explore factors that may affect this relationship between abundance and occupancy using simulations, which will compared to real data. In this case, we are going to explore the effect of the change of scale of data on the relationship between abundance and occupancy patterns, and how this affects its upper limit, taking into account the spatial autocorrelation of the predictor variables and the population status.

[Host: Pedro Tarroso, Biodiversity of Deserts and Arid Regions - BIODESERTS]