Narayani Barve

University of Kansas | KU · Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

A tradition exists for delineating ‘‘hardiness zones’’ for important plants in horticulture and agriculture. However, these zones are typically based on surviving cold winter conditions, disregarding other stressors. Factors such as the effects of summer heat, aridity, or excessive humidity have been overlooked, limiting our understanding of challe...

Land use and land cover (LULC) change has been identified as an important driver of emerging mosquito-borne zoonotic diseases. However, studies are often limited to individual vector species, despite the potential for interspecific variation in vector competency within mosquito assemblages. This variation can affect transmission hazard, particularl...

Predicting potential distributions of species in new areas is challenging. Physiological data can improve interpretation of predicted distributions and can be used in directed distribution models. Nonnative species provide useful case studies. Panther chameleons (Furcifer pardalis) are native to Madagascar and have established populations in Florid...

Land use and land cover (LULC) change has been identified as an important driver of emerging mosquito-borne zoonotic diseases. However, studies are often limited to individual vector species, despite the potential for interspecific variation in vector competency within mosquito assemblages. This variation can affect transmission hazard, particularl...

Mosquito vectors of eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) and West Nile virus (WNV) in the USA reside within broad multi-species assemblages that vary in spatial and temporal composition, relative abundances and vector competence. These variations impact the risk of pathogen transmission and the operational management of these species by local p...

Effects of global climate change on population persistence are often mediated by life‐history traits of individuals, especially the timing of somatic growth, reproductive development, and reproduction itself. These traits can vary among age groups and between the sexes, a result of differential life‐history tactics and levels of lifetime reproducti...

The overlap between arbovirus host, arthropod vectors, and pathogen distributions in environmentally suitable habitats represents a nidus where risk for pathogen transmission may occur. Everglades virus (EVEV), subtype II Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV), is endemic to southern Florida where it is transmitted by the endemic vector Culex...

Distributions of species are frequently treated as responding to current environmental conditions across areas that have been accessible to them. Although that paradigm has been quite successful in describing distributional areas, the effects of land use history have been neglected in most studies to date. In this study, we analyzed effects of hist...

Data exploration is a critical step in understanding patterns and biases in information about species' geographic distributions. We present rangemap, an R package that implements tools to explore species' ranges based on simple analyses and visualizations. The rangemap package uses species occurrence coordinates, spatial polygons, and raster layers...

Mosquito vectors of eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) and West Nile virus (WNV) in the US reside within broad multi-species assemblages that vary in spatial and temporal composition, relative abundances, and vector competence. These variations impact the risk of pathogen transmission and the operational management of these species by local p...

Biodiversity inventory is among the major challenges for conservation biology in the face of global change. Species exist in two spaces that are linked in the so‐called Hutchinsonian Duality: distributions in geographical space and ecological niches in environmental space. We explore implications of using distinct methods to select locations for bi...

Recent climate projections have shown that the distribution of organisms in island biotas is highly affected by climate change. Here, we present the result of the analysis of niche dynamics of a plant group, Memecylon, in Sri Lanka, an island, using species occurrences and climate data. We aim to determine which climate variables explain current di...

Here, we quantified effects of landscape on mosquito community composition, abundances, and diversity, and generated prediction maps for West Nile virus vector competent mosquitoes in Manatee County, Florida. We used mosquito abundance data collected across 56 mosquito control district surveillance sites in Manatee County, FL, and used joint specie...

Insect phenological lability is key for determining which species will adapt under environmental change. However, little is known about when adult insect activity terminates and overall activity duration. We used community-science and museum specimen data to investigate the effects of climate and urbanisation on timing of adult insect activity for...

Insect phenological lability is key for determining which species will adapt under environmental change. However, little is known about when adult insect activity terminates, and overall activity duration. We used community-science and museum specimen data to investigate the effects of climate and urbanization on timing of adult insect activity for...

Broad-scale, quantitative assessments of insect biodiversity and the factors shaping it remain particularly poorly explored. Here we undertook a spatial phylogenetic analysis of North American butterflies to test whether climate stability and temperature gradients have shaped their diversity and endemism. We also performed the first quantitative co...

A wave of green leaves and multi‐colored flowers advances from low to high latitudes each spring. However, little is known about how flowering offset (i.e., ending of flowering) and duration of populations of the same species vary along environmental gradients. Understanding these patterns is critical for predicting the effects of future climate an...

Broad-scale quantitative assessments of biodiversity and the factors shaping it remain particularly poorly explored in insects. Here, we undertook a spatial phylogenetic analysis of North American butterflies via assembly of a time-calibrated phylogeny of the region coupled with a unique, complete range assessment for ~75% of the known species. We...

Biodiversity studies rely heavily on estimates of species' distributions often obtained through ecological niche modelling. Numerous software packages exist that allow users to model ecological niches using machine learning and statistical methods. However, no existing package with a graphical user interface allows users to perform model calibratio...

Reconstructing ecological niche evolution can provide insight into the biogeography and diversification of evolving lineages. However, comparative phylogenetic methods may infer the history of ecological niche evolution inaccurately because (a) species' niches are often poorly characterized; and (b) phylogenetic comparative methods rely on niche su...

North America is a large continent with extensive climatic, geological, soil, and biological diversity. That biota is under threat from habitat destruction and climate change, making a quantitative assessment of biodiversity of critical importance. Rapid digitization of plant specimen records and accumulation of DNA sequence data enable a much‐need...

Premise: Citizen science platforms for sharing photographed digital vouchers, such as iNaturalist, are a promising source of phenology data, but methods and best practices for use have not been developed. Here we introduce methods using Yucca flowering phenology as a case study, because drivers of Yucca phenology are not well understood despite th...

The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) imposed a public access policy on all publications for which the research was supported by their grants; the policy was drafted in 2004 and took effect in 2008. The policy is now 11 years old, yet no analysis has been presented to assess whether in fact this largest-scale US-based public access...

Our world is in the midst of unprecedented change—climate shifts and sustained, widespread habitat degradation have led to dramatic declines in biodiversity rivaling historical extinction events. At the same time, new approaches to publishing and integrating previously disconnected data resources promise to help provide the evidence needed for more...

Broad-scale plant flowering phenology data has predominantly come from geographically and taxonomically restricted monitoring networks. However, platforms such as iNaturalist, where citizen scientists upload photographs and curate identifications, provide a promising new source of data. Here we develop a general set of best practices for scoring iN...

Backgrounds and aims: Tropical plant species are already suffering the effects of climate change and projections warn of even greater changes in the following decades. Of particular concern are alterations in flowering phenology, given that it is considered a fitness trait, part of plant species ecological niche, with potential cascade effects in...

Backgrounds and Aims Tropical plant species are already suffering the effects of climate change and projections warn of even greater changes in the following decades. Of particular concern are alterations in flowering phenology, given that it is considered a fitness trait, part of plant species ecological niche, with potential cascade effects in pl...

Determining the environmental and ecological drivers of variation in mammalian life histories is essential for effectively monitoring responses of these taxa to global change. We investigated relationships between climate and an integral life history trait (litter size) in the geographically widespread North American deer mouse (Peromyscus manicula...

We are in the midst of unprecedented change—climate shifts and sustained, widespread habitat degradation have led to dramatic declines in biodiversity rivaling historical extinction events. At the same time, new approaches to publishing and integrating previously disconnected data resources promise to help provide the evidence needed for more effic...

Insects are possibly the most taxonomically and ecologically diverse class of multicellular organisms on Earth. Consequently, they provide nearly unlimited opportunities to develop and test ecological and evolutionary hypotheses. Currently, however, large-scale studies of insect ecology, behavior, and trait evolution are impeded by the difficulty i...

Example insect natural history data (PDF document)

Ontology competency questions, user domains or groups, and example use cases

Example insect natural history data (CSV file)

Background Ecological niche modeling is a set of analytical tools with applications in diverse disciplines, yet creating these models rigorously is now a challenging task. The calibration phase of these models is critical, but despite recent attempts at providing tools for performing this step, adequate detail is still missing. Here, we present the...

Table S5. Locality Data and Taxonomic Information of All Species, Related to Figures 1–7 Taxonomic information for the 1,490 taxa + three outgroup taxa used in this study: the major group, family, species name and authority, updated name if there have been taxonomic revisions, voucher information for the samples collected from the University of Fl...

Recent availability of biodiversity data resources has enabled an unprecedented ability to estimate phylogenetically based biodiversity metrics over broad scales. Such approaches elucidate ecological and evolutionary processes yielding a biota and help guide conservation efforts. However, the choice of appropriate phylogenetic resources and underly...

Evolutionary dynamics of abiotic ecological niches across phylogenetic history can shed light on large-scale biogeographic patterns, macroevolutionary rate shifts, and the relative ability of lineages to respond to global change. An unresolved question is how best to represent and reconstruct evolution of these complex traits at coarse spatial scal...

Museums and funding agencies have invested considerable resources in recent years to digitize information from natural history specimens and contribute to online species occurrence databases. Such efforts are necessary to reap the full benefits of irreplaceable historical data by making them openly accessible and allowing the integration of collect...

The study assesses distribution and population status of Saraca asoca from Sahyadri–Konkan ecological corridor. Eighteen localities at various protection levels ranging from wildlife sanctuary to private forests were selected and spatially mapped to arrive at a distribution map. Kolmogorov–Smirnov test indicated that the size class distribution of...

Snakebite envenoming is an important public health concern worldwide. In the Americas, ~300,000 bites occur annually, leaving 84,110–140,981 envenomings and 652–3466 deaths.Here, we modeled current and future snakebite risk using ecological nichemodels (ENMs) of 90 venomous snake taxa. Current snakebite risk predictions were corroborated by inciden...

Species have geographic distributions constrained by combinations of abiotic factors, biotic factors, and dispersal-related factors. Abiotic requirements vary across the life stages for a species; for plant species, a particularly important life stage is when the plant flowers and develops seeds. A previous year-long experiment showed that ambient...

ABSTRACT: Abundance and other aspects of population ecology have long been known to contribute to shaping the geography of speciesí distributions. In particular, abundance patterns have recently been shown to negatively correlate with environmental distance from conditions in the center of a speciesí abiotic niche, rather than vary with distance fr...

Aim Ecological niche modelling is being widely applied to help us understand the geographic distributions of species, despite challenges regarding the estimation of fundamental niches that limit model transferability over time and space. Mechanistic models are an alternative, but they can be difficult to implement owing to the detailed knowledge th...

Saraca asoca (Roxb.) de Wilde is an economically important medicinal tree species that has been identifi ed as one of the fl agship species for conservation and cultivation in India. Scanty information regarding its population structure is available as the demand from pharmaceutical industry is catered by substitute species. Natural populations fro...

Ecological niche models (ENM) have become a popular tool to define and predict the "ecological niche" of a species. An implicit assumption of the ENMs is that the predicted ecological niche of a species actually reflects the adaptive landscape of the species. Thus in sites predicted to be highly suitable, species would have maximum fitness compared...

Aim Ecological niche modelling ( ENM ) and species distribution modelling ( SDM ) have been used extensively to study biogeographic and macroecological patterns of terrestrial fauna and flora. Few studies to date have applied ENM and SDM to marine ecosystems, and those that have treated the marine environment as a two‐dimensional space owing to lim...

Henslow’s Sparrows (Ammodramus henslowii) are distributed in tallgrass prairies in central North America; however, this species is restricted further to specific habitats within these prairies—large expanses with relatively little woody vegetation but an accumulation of standing grasses and forbs, conditions that result from infrequent disturbances...

Danaus plexippus) have a unique yearly life cycle, in which successive generations breed and move northward from the southern USA in spring to the northern US and southern Canada by late summer; they overwinter in extremely restricted areas in central Mexico and along the California coast. Mexican overwintering frequency owing to climate change. He...

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) have a unique yearly life cycle, in which successive generations breed and move northward from the southern USA in spring to the northern US and southern Canada by late summer; they overwinter in extremely restricted areas in central Mexico and along the California coast. Mexican overwintering populations have...

Background/Question/Methods Estimating the distribution of a species represents a major challenge and requires knowledge of the interaction of at least three important factors: (1) its environmental tolerance range, or fundamental niche, summarized as a time-dependent diagonal matrix NF(t) with the probability of invading a given environment as a...

Ecological niche models and species distribution models are becoming important elements in the toolkit of biogeographers and ecologists. Although burgeoning in use, much variation exists in implementation of these techniques, leading to considerable diversity of methodology and discussion of what is the ‘best’ approach. In this analysis, we explore...

Henslow's Sparrows (Ammodramus henslowii) are distributed in tallgrass prairies in central North America; however, this species is restricted further to specific habitats within these prairies—large expanses with relatively little woody vegetation but an accumulation of standing grasses and forbs, conditions that result from infrequent disturbances...

Embelia ribes is a red-listed medicinal plant species that contains embelin, which has wide clinical applications. Its great demand in Ayurveda and the pharmaceutical industry (> 100 t/yr) has imposed tremendous pressure on natural populations from the Western Ghats of India. In this study, we have prepared a distribution map of E. ribes for the no...

Aim Geographic distributions of species are constrained by several factors acting at different scales, with climate assumed to be a major determinant at broad extents. Recent studies, however, have challenged this statement and indicated that climate may not dominate among the factors governing geographic distributions of species. Here, we argue th...

A recent paper (1) purported to document negligible climatic determination among European bird species, with implications for forecasting range shifts in changing climates. However , only 12 of 100 species analyzed were endemic—thus, for the remaining 88% of test species, key limits with likely climatic determination were excluded, particularly eas...

There is an emphasis the world over to build back biodiversity even in human- dominated landscapes, such as cityscapes. Birds and butterflies that are highly vagile have been studied extensively, but less mobile taxa such as ants have been ignored, for this reason we chose them as the study taxa for this work. The distribution and abundance of ant...

Rattans, the climbing palms, are one of the most important non-wood forest produce supporting the livelihood of many forest dwelling communities in India. However, extensive harvest, loss of habitat and poor regeneration has resulted in dwindling of rattan populations necessitating an urgent need to conserve the existing rattan genetic resources. I...

Although conservation and management of tropical ecosystems requires that we understand the threats to these areas, there are no standardized methods to quantify threats to ecosystems. We used a geographic information system-based protocol with several physical and socioeconomic attributes to assess the threats to a protected area, a wildlife sanct...

"We demonstrate for the first time the potential use of satellite imagery to characterize areas of high and low species richness of trees in tropical forests. Our studies, conducted in the Biligiri Rangaswamy hills in the Western Ghats, India, show a high positive correlation between species richness and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (...

These proceedings covers topics on managing plant genetic diversity i.e. applications of genomic sciences for better understanding of gene pools; technologies and strategies for ex situ conservation; the deployment and management of genetic diversity in agroecosystems; the role of bioinformatics in conservation and use; in situ conservation of wild...

Forest classification is traditionally based on the structure and composition of vegetation, which in turn is strongly linked with the climatic profile of the area. Forest maps thus prepared cannot appropriately meet the needs of the managers whose renewed mandate is to conserve the biological richness of the forests. The emerging need for protecti...