Evaluating alternative data sets for ecological niche models of birds in the Andes

Ecological niche modeling (ENM) is an effective tool for providing innovative insights to questions in evolution, ecology and conservation. As environmental datasets accumulate, modelers need to evaluate the relative merit of different types of data for ENM. We used three alternative environmental data sets: climatic data, remote‐sensing data (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), and elevation data, to model the distribution of six bird...