Integrating food webs in species distribution models improves ecological
niche estimation and predictions
Abstract
Biotic interactions drive multitrophic species community assembly. Yet,
explicitly incorporating this process in species distribution models
(SDMs) is particularly challenging, even when biotic interactions are
known. Here, we propose a framework that combines knowledge of trophic
interactions with Bayesian structural equation models to model each
species as a function of its prey or predators and environmental
conditions. We tested and validated our framework on realistic simulated
communities spanning different theoretical models and ecological setups.
We showed that our framework improves the inference of both species’
potential and realized niches compared to single SDMs (mean performances
increased by 8% and 6% respectively), especially for species with
strong biotic control, thus increasing model predictive performance. Our
framework can easily integrate various SDM extensions (e.g., occupancy
models) and algorithms, and stands out as a novel solution for modeling
multitrophic community distributions when trophic interactions are known
or assumed.