ECOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS OF HERPETOFAUNAL ASSEMBLAGE STRUCTURE IN THE LONGLEAF PINE ECOSYSTEM
Ecological niche models (ENMs) represent a potentially valuable yet largely untapped resource for prioritizing broad regions of environmental suitability in conservation or restoration efforts. Here we assess the ability of ENMs to delineate such shared hotspots of climatic suitability in several amphibian assemblages from the longleaf pine ecosystem, an ecosystem currently of high conservation priority in the Southeastern Coastal Plain physiographic province of North America. Using data obtained from ENMs in 40 amphibian species, we found that amphibian longleaf ,specialists," representing species endemic and/or highly specialized to the longleaf ecosystem, exhibited significantly higher shared similarity in the modeled climatic niche than those species considered ,characteristic" of longleaf ecosystems, or synonymous with both longleaf and non longleaf dominated habitat types. Furthermore, high values of environmental suitability for these species clustered significantly in geographic space, indicating areas at the regional scale that overlap with known core landscapes for the longleaf ecosystem and that may serve as preliminary foci for restoration efforts. As conceptual trends in conservation and restoration ecology increasingly move towards more large scale, ecosystem wide approaches, ENM based analyses such as these may serve as a versatile approach to delineating baseline patterns of shared environmental suitability in focal assemblages.