Data for comparison of climate envelope models developed using expert-selected variables versus statistical selection

The data we used for this study include species occurrence data (n=15 species), climate data and predictions, an expert opinion questionnaire, and species masks that represented the model domain for each species. For this data release, we include the results of the expert opinion questionnaire and the species model domains (or masks). We developed an expert opinion questionnaire to gather information regarding expert opinion regarding the importance of climate variables in determining a species geographic range. The species masks, or model domains, were defined separately for each species using a variation of the “target-group” approach (Phillips et al. 2009), where the domain was determine using convex polygons including occurrence data for at least three phylogenetically related and similar species (Watling et al. 2012). The species occurrence data, climate data, and climate predictions are freely available online, and therefore not included in this data release. The species occurrence data were obtained primarily from the online database Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF; http://www.gbif.org/), and from scientific literature (Watling et al. 2011). Climate data were obtained from the WorldClim database (Hijmans et al. 2005) and climate predictions were obtained from the Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Prediction Studies (COAPS) at Florida State University (https://floridaclimateinstitute.org/resources/data-sets/regional-downscaling). See metadata for references.