A validation standard for area of habitat maps for terrestrial birds and mammals

Area of habitat (AOH) is a deductive model which maps the distribution of suitable habitats at suitable altitudes for a species inside its broad geographical range. The AOH maps have been validated using presence-only data for small subsets of species for different taxonomic groups, but no standard validation method exists when absence data are not available. We develop a novel two-step validation protocol for AOH which includes first a model-based evaluation of model prevalence (i.e, the proportion of suitable habitat within a species' range), and second a validation using species point localities (presence-only) data. We applied the protocol to AOH maps of terrestrial birds and mammals.