A standard protocol for reporting species distribution models

Species distribution models (SDMs) constitute the most common class of models across ecology, evolution and conservation. The advent of ready-to-use software pack - ages and increasing availability of digital geoinformation have considerably assisted the application of SDMs in the past decade, greatly enabling their broader use for informing conservation and management, and for quantifying impacts from global change. However, models must be fit for purpose, with all important aspects of their development and applications properly considered. Despite the widespread use of SDMs, standardisation and documentation of modelling protocols remain limited, which makes it hard to assess whether development steps are appropriate for end use. To address these issues, we propose a standard protocol for reporting SDMs, with an emphasis on describing how a study’s objective is achieved through a series of model - ing decisions. We call this the ODMAP (Overview, Data, Model, Assessment and Prediction) protocol, as its components reflect the main steps involved in building SDMs and other empirically-based biodiversity models. The ODMAP protocol serves two main purposes. First, it provides a checklist for authors, detailing key steps for model building and analyses, and thus represents a quick guide and generic workflow for modern SDMs. Second, it introduces a structured format for documenting and communicating the models, ensuring transparency and reproducibility, facilitating peer review and expert evaluation of model quality, as well as meta-analyses. We detail all elements of ODMAP, and explain how it can be used for different model objectives and applications, and how it complements efforts to store associated metadata and define modelling standards. We illustrate its utility by revisiting nine previously published case studies, and provide an interactive web-based application to facilitate its use. We plan to advance ODMAP by encouraging its further refinement and adoption by the scientific community

Identifying technology solutions to bring conservation into the innovation era

Innovation has the potential to enable conservation science and practice to keep pace with the escalating threats to global biodiversity, but this potential will only be realized if such innovations are designed and developed to fulfill specific needs and solve well‐defined conservation problems. We propose that business‐world strategies for assessing the practicality of innovation can be applied to assess the viability of innovations, such as new technology, for addressing biodiversity conservation challenges. Here, we outline a five‐step, “lean start‐up” based approach for considering conservation innovation from a business‐planning perspective. Then, using three prominent conservation initiatives – Marxan (software), Conservation Drones (technology support), and Mataki (wildlife‐tracking devices) – as case studies, we show how considering proposed initiatives from the perspective of a conceptual business model can support innovative technologies in achieving desired conservation outcomes.Gwenllian Iacona, Anurag Ramachandra, Jennifer McGowan, Alasdair Davies, Lucas Joppa, Lian Pin Koh, Eric Fegraus, Edward Game, Gurutzeta Guillera, Arroita, Rob Harcourt, Karlina Indraswari, José J Lahoz, Monfort, Jessica L Oliver, Hugh P Possingham, Adrian Ward, David W Watson, James EM Watson, Brendan A Wintle, Iadine Chadè