Yes. Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in ecology. In theory, SDMs capture (at least part of) species' ecological niches and can be used to make inferences about the distribution of suitable habitat for species of interest :)

Yes, we can use SDMs to predict Fauna and Flora's habitats modeling.

We need environmental data (variable) based on species that we want to predict suitable habitats; Presence/Non-presence data, Dem, Landuse, etc.

Dear Babu,

Although I fully agree with Andrew Paul McKenzie Pegman and Abbas Naqibzadeh , I have to complement the answer. Technically, you can use SDM, but you should take into account some of its assumptions. The studied species must be in equilibrium with its environment (i.e., not in an active invasion phase). Also the used environmental variables must be ecologically relevant predictors of the distribution. Please refer to Article Paintings predict the distribution of species, or the challe...

Several SDM studies use macroclimatic variables only, but I'm not sure whether macroclimate intself can explain the distribution of an entomopathogenic fungi species. Maybe you should firstly predict the potential distribution of the host insect species, and predict the potential distribution of the fungi species in a second step, similar to the way biotic interaction was incorporated in the sudy by Engelhardt et al.: Article Ignoring biotic interactions overestimates climate change ef...

HTH,

Ákos

You can, but at the same time you may need some polishing of the results.

As Ákos Bede-Fazekas suggested, you are working with a pathogenic species and that has some stuff to consider. It should be better to evaluate both fungus and host species' distributions, although that also has caveats. If they are too linked (i.e., the fungus needs the species to survive) another possibility can be evaluating their overlap (i.e., Schoener's D) or using the hosts' presence points as background (that was a suggestion from a reviewer for one of my papers).

I link here some relevant references:

Anderson, R. P. (2017). When and how should biotic interactions be considered in models of species niches and distributions?. Journal of Biogeography, 44(1), 8-17.

Article When and how should biotic interactions be considered in mod...

Dormann, C. F., Bobrowski, M., Dehling, D. M., Harris, D. J., Hartig, F., Lischke, H., ... & Kraan, C. (2018). Biotic interactions in species distribution modelling: 10 questions to guide interpretation and avoid false conclusions. Global ecology and biogeography, 27(9), 1004-1016.

Article Biotic interactions in species distribution modelling: 10 qu...

Waltari, E., & Perkins, S. L. (2010). In the hosts' footsteps? Ecological niche modeling and its utility in predicting parasite distributions. In S. Morand & B. R. Krasnov (Eds.), The biogeography of host-parasite interactions (pp. 145-155). Oxford University Press.

https://books.google.com.tw/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3gcWDAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA145&dq=In+the+hosts%27+footsteps%3F+Ecological+niche+modeling+and+its+utility+in+predicting+parasite+distributions.&ots=USsVNhp53A&sig=d7aDFuMXa9l0DMkeu1egM0tOLDU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=In%20the%20hosts'%20footsteps%3F%20Ecological%20niche%20modeling%20and%20its%20utility%20in%20predicting%20parasite%20distributions.&f=false

Furthermore, I would suggest you to tune your models for better results. Maybe you can do something by using R. Here I attach another reference.

Sillero, N., Campos, J. C., Arenas-Castro, S., & Barbosa, A. M. (2023). A curated list of R packages for ecological niche modelling. Ecological Modelling, 476, 110242.

Article A curated list of R packages for ecological niche modelling