Predicting the distribution of non-vagile taxa: A response to McNyset and Blackburn (2006) and re-evaluation of Stockman et al. (2006)

Abstract

This paper addresses the issues raised by McNyset and Blackburn (2006) in their response to Stockman et al. (2006). Re-evaluation of our published GARP analyses by McNyset and Blackburn showed that a much improved ecological niche model is obtained for predicting the distribution of the trapdoor spider genus Promyrmekiaphila in central/northern California. The improved niche model results in a substantially reduced omission error rate and a predictive model comparable to models obtained using other methods (GLM and BIOCLIM). However, the improved GARP models have a high commission error rate (> 0.75); consequently, the inferences regarding difficulties in modelling non-vagile taxa drawn by Stockman et al. remain valid. Finally, we discuss other relatively minor criticisms of our study raised by McNyset and Blackburn and issues related to the peer review of our original paper. © 2006 The Authors.