Niche modeling of a freshwater fish species: Estimating and mapping the uncertainty among modeling methods and freshwater variables.

Resumo

ENMs are increasingly accurate, which give us more reliability to define environmentally suitable areas to species. Although, it is necessary to remember that even the predicted suitable areas are suffused with uncertainty and thus, may not indicate the “real” effect of the environment over the species dynamics. Considering this, the aim of this work is to assess which factors create more uncertainties on freshwater large fish species modelling: methods or climate variables. To predict the species distribution, we collected the occurrence sites of Brachyplathystoma filamentosum and 1 km freshwater-specific variables available in climate and environmental groups. The suitability maps showed that the areas with great environmental suitability values were the Amazon large rivers, and nearby areas. Moreover, the Amazon basin presented high uncertainty values for the methods component, while for the variables the uncertainty mapped in this area was lower. The methods and variables were responsible for 46% and 40% of the uncertainty. Therefore, due to the predictions’ uncertainty presented, it is necessary to be caution in choosing the variables and methods to model a specie distribution. Moreover, we emphasize the importance of using uncertainty analysis to verify the accuracy of ENMs in future works.