Abstract

Classical Species Distribution Models are primarily based on climate, land use and other abiotic variables. Despite recent studies showing that biotic information can play an important role in shaping the distribution of species even at large scales, results are not always consistent among studies and the underlying factors that influence the importance of this biotic information to the models, are unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we evaluated how different factors affect the importance of biotic interactions in shaping species distributions, using fine-scale data from plant-pollinator and parasitic interactions in the Netherlands. We found that the models of wild bees improved, when their biotic interaction was included, and the model performance improved the most for parasitic bees. Taxonomic level, resolution and distribution range of the interacting species and degree of specialization of the modelled species all affected the importance of the biotic interactions to the models.