The use and misuse of species-area relationships in predicting climate-driven extinction

Abstract

Thomas et al. (2004) pioneered the estimate of extinction risk due to climate change by coupling species range-loss simulations from species distribution models with species-loss estimates from the species-area relationships (SARs). Unfortunately, numerous conceptual and practical problems permeate this seemingly solid and straightforward approach. Chapter 4 explored developments in climate envelope modeling. Here we focus on the challenges associated with applying a SAR approach to climate-driven extinction estimates and propose a novel application of recent Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) theory in ecology that may help to address some of them.