Improving models of species' distributions is essential for conservation, especially in light of global change. Species distribution models (SDMs) often rely on mean environmental conditions, yet species distributions are also a function of environmental heterogeneity and filtering acting at multiple spatial scales. Geodiversity, which we define as the variation of abiotic features and processes of Earth's entire geosphere (inclusive of climate), has potential to improve SDMs and conservation assessments, as they capture multiple abiotic dimensions of species niches, however they have not been sufficiently tested in SDMs. We tested a range of geodiversity variables computed at varying scales using climate and elevation data. We compared predictive performance of MaxEnt SDMs generated using CHELSA bioclimatic variables to those also including geodiversity variables for 31 mammalian species in Colombia. Results show the spatial grain of geodiversity variables affects SDM performance. Some variables consistently exhibited an increasing or decreasing trend in variable importance with spatial grain, showing slight scale-dependence and indicating that some geodiversity variables are more relevant at particular scales for some species. Incorporating geodiversity variables into SDMs, and doing so at the appropriate spatial scales, enhances the ability to model species-environment relationships, thereby contributing to the conservation and management of biodiversity. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Geodiversity for science and society’.

中文翻译：

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生物多样性热点地区尺度相关的地球多样性对物种分布模型的影响

改进物种分布模型对于保护至关重要，特别是考虑到全球变化。物种分布模型（SDM）通常依赖于平均环境条件，但物种分布也是环境异质性和多个空间尺度过滤的函数。地理多样性，我们将其定义为地球整个地圈（包括气候）的非生物特征和过程的变化，有潜力改善 SDM 和保护评估，因为它们捕获了物种生态位的多个非生物维度，但是它们尚未经过充分的测试。 SDM。我们测试了使用气候和海拔数据在不同尺度上计算的一系列地球多样性变量。我们将使用 CHELSA 生物气候变量生成的 MaxEnt SDM 的预测性能与还包括哥伦比亚 31 种哺乳动物物种的地理多样性变量的预测性能进行了比较。结果表明，地理多样性变量的空间粒度影响 SDM 性能。一些变量在变量重要性上始终表现出随空间粒度增加或减少的趋势，显示出轻微的尺度依赖性，并表明一些地理多样性变量在特定尺度上与某些物种更相关。将地理多样性变量纳入 SDM 并在适当的空间尺度上这样做，可以增强对物种与环境关系进行建模的能力，从而有助于生物多样性的保护和管理。本文是西奥·墨菲会议问题“科学与社会的地理多样性”的一部分。