title: Mistaking geography for biology: inferring processes from species distributions.
abstract: Over the past few decades, there has been a rapid proliferation of statistical methods that infer evolutionary and ecological processes from data on species distributions. These methods have led to considerable new insights, but they often fail to account for the effects of historical biogeography on present-day species distributions. Because the geography of speciation can lead to patterns of spatial and temporal autocorrelation in the distributions of species within a clade, this can result in misleading inferences about the importance of deterministic processes in generating spatial patterns of biodiversity. In this opinion article, we discuss ways in which patterns of species distributions driven by historical biogeography are often interpreted as evidence of particular evolutionary or ecological processes. We focus on three areas that are especially prone to such misinterpretations: community phylogenetics, environmental niche modelling, and analyses of beta diversity (compositional turnover of biodiversity).
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia. Electronic address: dan.l.warren@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Dan L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Warren
authors.affiliation: Macroevolution and Macroecology Group, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cardillo
authors.affiliation: Centre for Biodiversity Analysis, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
authors.forename: Dan F
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Rosauer
authors.affiliation: Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, One University Station C0990 Austin, TX 78712, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel I
authors.initials: DI
authors.lastname: Bolnick
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004463:Ecology / Q000379:methods*; D004777:Environment; D005843:Geography; D008954:Models, Biological; D058974:Phylogeography
keywords: biodiversity; biodiversity turnover; biogeography; community phylogenetics; ecological niche modelling; evolutionary ecology; species distribution modelling