A climate suitability index for species distribution modelling applied to terrestrial arthropods in the Mediterranean region

Ciarlo', James M.; Borg Inguanez, Monique; Coppola, Erika; Micallef, Aaron; Mifsud, David

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1391-2025

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1391-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1391-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

01 Sep 2025

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 01 Sep 2025

A climate suitability index for species distribution modelling applied to terrestrial arthropods in the Mediterranean region

James M. Ciarlo', Monique Borg Inguanez, Erika Coppola, Aaron Micallef, and David Mifsud

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1391-2025-supplement

Data sets

ERA5-driven reduced-Mediterranean RegCM5-BATS CP simulation (Version 1) J. Ciarlo' et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14537964

Model code and software

ciarloj/Eco-Climate-Index: Eco-Climate Index Scripts (v1.1) J. Ciarlo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16875531

Video supplement

A climate suitability index for ecological habitats applied to terrestrial arthropods in the Mediterranean Region J. Ciarlo https://doi.org/10.5446/70651

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Chief editor

The paper is timely: there is growing interest in the development of approaches to model species distribution and the one presented in this paper is novel, simple, and efficient. The topic is of significance for a broad audience, from ecologists interested in theoretical aspects to conservationists. While the analysis has a regional scope, the approach is generalisable and may be applied elsewhere.