I am looking for potential collaborators for a project that seeks to assess the ecological importance of specific tree species of Borneo. I invite interested specialists to message me.
A direct ecological importance by tree species can be measurable on the occurrence of bird species who use these species to nesting or feeding. So, you can quantify the relative importance of tree species on distribution of single species and also on the patterns of biodiversity....
If you are interesting in the topic, I can send to you some draft, thinked to study the importance of some tree species on the goodness of fit of species distribution models, that you can modify and to adapt to your particular study plan....
Many thanks for the kind reply. yes, precisely this what I am looking for. Can you please send me the drafts. I can email you the details of the project.
You might get some ideas from the literature on 'extended phenotypes'. Try papers by Tom Whitham and his team from Northern Arizona University and Robert Barbour/Brad Potts from University of Tasmania ( I was involved in some research showing flow-on impacts of genetic variation in Eucalyptus globulus to invertebrate communities, including higher trophic level predators such as spiders).