Species for Project

[JackRicho]

Species	Pros	Cons	Comments
Platypus	- Animal of personal interest - Lots of datapoints - Public interest	- Mobile species (? Research more) - Likely spotted if it is already there   - Does ENM for platypus exist already?	- Due to high social presence of animal, it is likely that any potential sightings have been recorded. Not much new information - Platypus are still rare, and there would likely be public interest in the topic
Trees	- Less Mobile, thus in theory, spatial distribution is more closely tied to -	- Does not interest me as much, no use of water datasets, may make the project too simple
Wollemi Pines	- May be very useful if can be done accurately due to the rarity of the species	- No datapoints to train from (Cant do Bioclim or Domain). Very closely guarded for environmental safekeeping. - Ethics if successful. Should that information be out there? -	- By using Random Forests method -> the use of decision trees, it could be done, or by finding a species with the same fundamental niche. Both would be very difficult
Rakali (Native “Water Rat”	- More neglected than platypus - May be more useful information if less occurrence is out there - Water dwelling creature	- Less public interest	- Gives some love to native rodent
Invasive Species	- In a way, ENM models such as Bioclim or Domain is perfect for predicting where an incursion of an invasive species would be most harmful	- Harder to predict all variables, especially as invasive species live or die depending on their interactions with the native ecosystem. - Would likely require decision trees. Very difficult - No point with the location function if it is not yet present	- If I were interested in shifting the topic of the project to biosecurity, this could be interesting

At present, I am going to continue with Platypus as the species of interest. With the aim of creating an aid for anyone to find them, however, with relatively little effort, i could easily shift the framework so that we can include Rakali as well