Open Access“Reconstructions of the past distribution of Testudo graeca mitochondrial lineages in the Middle East and Transcaucasia support multiple refugia since the Last Glacial Maximum”: A response to Turkozan et al. (2021)
Author(s) -
Flora Ihlow
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
herpetological journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.409
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 2634-1379
pISSN - 0268-0130
DOI - 10.33256/31.4.201203
Subject(s) - subspecies , tortoise , ecological niche , range (aeronautics) , biology , glacial period , ecology , pleistocene , last glacial maximum , species distribution , environmental niche modelling , zoology , habitat , paleontology , materials science , composite material
Species distribution models (SDMs) are frequently used to characterise current, past or future realised environmental niches. Two recent studies applied different approaches to infer range dynamics in eastern subspecies of the spur-thighed tortoise Testudo graeca Linnaeus, 1758. We discuss differences in the conclusions of the two papers and use multivariate environmental similarity surface (MESS) analyses to show that the results of the study by Turkozan et al. (2021), recently published in the Herpetological Journal, are compromised by extrapolation and therefore have to be interpreted with caution.