Reconstructing ecological niches and geographic distributions of caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and red deer (Cervus elaphus) during the Last Glacial Maximum

A variety of approaches have been used to reconstruct glacial distributions of species, identify their environmental characteristics, and understand their influence on subsequent population expansions. Traditional methods, however, provide only rough estimates of past distributions, and are often unable to identify the ecological and geographic processes that shaped them. Recently, ecological niche modeling (ENM) methodologies have been applied to these questions in an effort to overcome such limitations. We apply ENM to the European faunal record of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to reconstruct ecological niches and potential ranges for caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and red deer (Cervus elaphus), and evaluate whether their LGM distributions resulted from tracking the geographic footprint of their ecological niches (niche conservatism) or if ecological niche shifts between the LGM and present might be implicated. Results indicate that the LGM geographic ranges of both species represent distributions characterized by niche conservatism, expressed through geographic contraction of the geographic footprints of their respective ecological niches.