Predicting the distribution of non‐vagile taxa: a response to McNyset and Blackburn (2006) and re‐evaluation of Stockman <i>et al</i>. (2006)

Abstract

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 (&gt; 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.