EFFECTS OF LANDSCAPE HISTORY ON CURRENT GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTIONS OF FOUR SPECIES OF REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS IN KANSAS

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 historical land use (i.e., 1850s to present) on distributions of four reptile and amphibian species in eastern Kansas. We fit typical species distribution models using a broad diversity of descriptors of landscape and environmental conditions, and detailed model selection exercises in all cases identified a combination of current land use and topographic features as the best defining dimensions for species' distributions. However, within the areas identified as suitable in these modeling exercises, known occurrences of each species were concentrated in areas that had been forested in the 1850s, and that remain forested. That is, although current land use was crucial, land use history was an important modifier, such that distributional ecology must look to more than just current environmental conditions in efforts to characterize species' geographic distributions comprehensively.