Alin

Allison

Bongaerts

Bridge

Calcagno

Cantor

Carpenter

Choirat

Costa

Cramer

Crowder

Dancey

Dolan

Dollar

Douvere

Fielding

Foley

Forsman

Franklin

Fricke

Geary

Gobin

Goreau

Grigg

Grottoli

Hadley

Harmelin-Vivien

Hayward

Hosmer

Hurley

Hurvich

Imai

Jackson

Jian

Jokiel

Kahng

Kane

Kendall

King

Kohler

Lambert

Larsen

Lesser

Luck

Marcelino

McLeod

Menard

Moran

Morel

Nyström

Peng

Puglise

Pyle

Rogers

Rooney

Sokal

Tabachnick

Tomz

Tyedmers

Van Den Eeckhaut

Webster

White

Wright

Yokoyama

PeerJ

Predictive habitat suitability models are powerful tools for cost-effective, statistically robust assessment of the environmental drivers of species distributions. The aim of this study was to develop predictive habitat suitability models for two genera of scleractinian corals (LeptoserisandMontipora) found within the mesophotic zone across the main Hawaiian Islands. The mesophotic zone (30–180 m) is challenging to reach, and therefore historically understudied, because it falls between the maximum limit of SCUBA divers and the minimum typical working depth of submersible vehicles. Here, we implement a logistic regression with rare events corrections to account for the scarcity of presence observations within the dataset. These corrections reduced the coefficient error and improved overall prediction success (73.6% and 74.3%) for both original regression models. The final models included depth, rugosity, slope, mean current velocity, and wave height as the best environmental covariates for predicting the occurrence of the two genera in the mesophotic zone. Using an objectively selected theta (“presence”) threshold, the predicted presence probability values (average of 0.051 forLeptoserisand 0.040 forMontipora) were translated to spatially-explicit habitat suitability maps of the main Hawaiian Islands at 25 m grid cell resolution. Our maps are the first of their kind to use extant presence and absence data to examine the habitat preferences of these two dominant mesophotic coral genera across Hawai‘i.</jats:p

Lindsay M. Veazey

Erik C. Franklin

Christopher Kelley

John Rooney

L. Neil Frazer

Robert J. Toonen

Crossref

The implementation of rare events logistic regression to predict the distribution of mesophotic hard corals across the main Hawaiian Islands

Table S4: Summary output for
                        Montipora

Table S4: Summary output for Montipora

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