A systematic appraisal of ecological niche modelling in the context of phytodiversity conservation

Ecological Niche Modelling (ENM) has gained popularity in recent years as it can be utilised to examine the trends and mechanisms encompassing the species distributions. It has become a prerequisite tool for locating new populations of rare and endangered species. A precise review has been carried out covering studies published in the last two decades focusing specifically on different categories of plant species. It has significantly brought out the diversity of methodological principles, spatial scales, geographic regions, taxonomic categories, applied algorithms and datasets for understanding different categories of species. Thus, 9 Critically endangered, 12 Endangered, 12 Vulnerable and 6 Near Threatened plants as per the IUCN Red-List as well as 12 Invasive, 6 Endemic, 10 Medicinal, 3 Macro-algae, 30 Mangroves and 8 Palm species were modelled using ENM. This review highlights frequent sources of occurrence viz., Field surveys using GPS (n = 31), Herbaria (n = 20) and GBIF (n = 13). The collection of Environmental data was preferably from WorldClim (n = 33) and the most utilised variables were Bio 12, Bio 15, Bio 4 and Bio 14. In the context of tools for ENM, Maxent was widely utilised by researchers (76