Species are not uniformly distributed across the landscape. For every species, there should be few favoured sites where abundance is high and many other sites of lower suitability where abundance is low. Consequently, local abundance could be thought of as a natural expression of species response to local conditions. The correlation between abundance and environmental suitability has been well documented, and a recent meta-analysis has suggested that this relationship could be a generality. Despite the importance and potential implication of the abundance–suitability relationship, its predictive power for meaningful extrapolations has been surprisingly poorly explored. In this study, we showed how a highly predictable trend can be extracted from the abundance–suitability relationship, accurately predicting the variation in species abundance at a high spatial resolution. We produced high-quality environmental suitability estimations for 50 endemic species in the Australian Wet Tropics. Environmental suitability derived from species distribution models was related to observed abundance estimated using data from 29 years of uninterrupted monitoring effort. We used the fitted relationship to accurately predict abundance at a fine scale across the species range. Our results showed that the abundance–suitability relationship was strong for endemic species in the Australian Wet Tropics. The predictive power of our models was high, explaining, on average, 55% of the deviance across taxa. Despite interspecific variation in the strength of the abundance–suitability relationship associated with potential intrinsic estimation biases, our approach provides a powerful tool for predicting abundance across the species range at a fine scale. The potential for robust abundance predictions from occurrence-based species distribution models shown in this study are numerous, and it could have a significant impact in enhancing species conservation and management decisions.

中文翻译：

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通过实施生态位理论预测物种丰度

物种在整个景观中分布不均匀。对于每个物种，应该有很少的丰度高的有利地点和许多其他适合度较低的丰度低的地点。因此，当地的丰度可以被认为是物种对当地条件的反应的自然表达。丰度和环境适宜性之间的相关性已得到充分证明，最近的一项荟萃​​分析表明，这种关系可能具有普遍性。尽管丰度-适宜性关系具有重要意义和潜在意义，但其对有意义外推的预测能力却出人意料地缺乏探索。在这项研究中，我们展示了如何从丰度-适宜性关系中提取高度可预测的趋势，以高空间分辨率准确预测物种丰度的变化。我们对澳大利亚湿热带地区的 50 种地方性物种进行了高质量的环境适宜性评估。来自物种分布模型的环境适宜性与使用 29 年不间断监测工作的数据估计的观察到的丰度有关。我们使用拟合关系来准确预测物种范围内精细尺度的丰度。我们的结果表明，澳大利亚湿热带地区特有物种的丰度-适宜性关系很强。我们模型的预测能力很高，平均可以解释整个分类群中 55% 的偏差。尽管与潜在的内在估计偏差相关的丰度-适宜性关系的强度存在种间差异，我们的方法提供了一个强大的工具，可以在精细尺度上预测物种范围内的丰度。本研究中显示的基于发生的物种分布模型进行稳健的丰度预测的潜力很多，它可能对加强物种保护和管理决策产生重大影响。