Predictive Skill and Environmental Novelty
All three models demonstrated high predictive skill under the forecasting period, accurately predicting albacore distributions most months (AUC > 0.8, MAE < 0.3; Figures 3, 4). However, predictive skill for all models declined as environmental novelty increased for both MLD and SST (Figure 4). Between the two environmental variables, greater SST novelty led to more pronounced declines in performance for all models, particularly for HE (Table S1). Despite all modeling approaches demonstrating similar relationships between predictive skill and environmental novelty, the iSDM consistently outperformed the other models as novelty increased (Figure 4), with higher average predictive skill under highly novel conditions (AUC = 0.69, MAE = 0.391 for novelty ≥ 0.3). Notably, the HE model showed the greatest decline in predictive skill with increasing novelty (mean AUC 0.47, MAE 0.46) and demonstrated the least predictive skill overall under these conditions.