UNR Postdoctoral Seminar || Dr. Israel Borokini
The UNR Postdoctoral Seminar Series highlights the work of UNR postdocs through featuring postdoc guest speakers and academic blog posts on the UNRPA website (https://www.unr.edu/postdoc/)
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Title
Do newly discovered locations alter the ecological niche dynamics of the threatened Ivesia webberi?
Seminar Abstract
Fitting niche models for rare and threatened species, with fewer spatial data, can be challenging, and such models can produce unreliable predictions. However, such niche models can be used to guide field surveys resulting in the discovery of new locations of the study species, and potentially expand the range size, ecological niche, and increase the scientific understanding of the species-environment relationship for the study organism. In this study, niche models were fitted for Ivesia webberi, a federally threatened plant species localized in the western Great Basin Desert. Niche modeling was done in BIOMOD2 R package and habitat suitability projection maps were generated from weighted mean ensembles of six algorithms, including Boosted Regression Trees, Random Forests, Maximum Entropy, Artificial Neural Networks, Generalized Additive Models and Generalized Linear Models. The habitat suitability maps were used to guide field surveys and new spatial data from the field sampling were added to the dataset for subsequent modeling iterations. The study, which began in 2015 with 21 presence points and ended in 2020, involved four modeling iterations and six years of field sampling; it resulted in the discovery of nine additional locations and expanded northern range extent of I. webberi by 65 km. Tests of niche overlap, similarity, equivalency, and expansion, as well as principal component analysis were carried out using the ecological conditions in the 21 original presence points and the additional nine locations to investigate dynamics in the ecological niche of I. webberi. Important ecological variables were investigated using jackknifing procedure. Findings from this study revealed the important environmental factors that drive I. webberi ecological niche, the significance of the new locations on the species’ niche, and underscores the importance of iterative niche modeling and model-guided sampling for effective conservation of rare and threatened species.
Speaker Biography
Dr. Israel Borokini completed his Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno. His doctoral dissertation focuses on several interdisciplinary research topics that integrate the conservation of Ivesia webberi, a federally threatened forb in the Great Basin Desert. His five-chapter dissertation research included landscape genetics, ecological niche modeling, genome size estimation, and relationship between the soil seed bank and aboveground plant communities. Prior to starting his PhD program, Israel had conducted several research studies in Nigeria, his home country, including the conservation of native plant diversity in the entire country, management of gene banks, invasive species management, and documentation of medicinal plants, among others. Consequently, Israel has published over 50 papers which has been cited over 700 times.
Additionally, Dr. Borokini represented Nigeria in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)’s ad-hoc technical expert group on invasive species, developed the country’s first invasive species living database to the GBIF, and also listed two species in the IUCN red list of threatened species. Furthermore, Israel currently represents Nigeria (and the United States) in the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species assessment.
Israel Borokini is a member of about 10 professional societies, and he holds leadership positions in two of them, including being the President of the Africa Section of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB), and a Director-at-Large for the Northern California Botanists. He also serves as an Associate Editor for the Conservation Science and Practice and Economic Botany. To learn more about Dr. Israel Borokini’s work, please visit his personal website, google scholar profile, or ResearchGate page.
Dr. Borokini is temporarily working as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Biology, but he will be starting a 2-year David H. Smith Conservation Research postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California Berkeley in August 2021, where his research will focus on the spatial phylogenetics of the North American flora.