Colonization and extinction dynamics and their link to the 1 distribution of European trees at continental scale 2 Arnaud Guyennon 1 , Bj¨orn Reineking 1 , Jonas Dahlgren 2 , Aleksi Lehtonen 3 , Sophia 3 Ratcliffe 4 , Paloma Ruiz-Benito 5,6 , Miguel A. Zavala 6 , and Georges Kunstler 1 4 1 Univ. Grenoble Alpes, INRAE, LESSEM, 2 rue de la Papeterie - BP 76 F-38402 St-Martin-d’H` eres, 5 France 6 2 Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, , Ume˚ a, 90183 Sweden 7 3 Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), , Latokartanonkaari 9 FI-00790 Helsinki Finland 8 4 Department of Systematic Botany and Functional Biodiversity, University of Leipzig, Johannisallee 21-23, 9 04103 Leipzig, Germany 10 5 Departamento de Biolog´ ıa y Geolog´ ıa, F´ ısica y Qu´ ımica Inorg´anica, Escuela Superior de Ciencias 11 Experimentales y Tecnolog´ ıa, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, C/ Tulip´an s/n, 28933, M´ostoles (Madrid), 12 Spain 13 6 Grupo de Ecologıa y Restauracion Forestal, Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Universidad de Alcala, 14 Edificio de Ciencias, Campus Universitario, 28805 Alcala de Henares, Madrid, Spain 15 Abstract 16 - Aim: Processes driving current tree species distribution are still largely debated. At- 17 tempts to relate species distribution and population demography metrics have shown mixed 18 results. In this context, we would like to test the hypotheses that the metapopulation pro- 19 cesses of colonization and extinction are linked to species distribution models. - Location: 20 Europe: Spain, France, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. - Taxon: Angiosperms and Gym- 21 nosperms. - Methods: For the 17 tree species analyzed we fitted species distribution model 22 (SDM) relating environmental variables to presence absence data across Europe. Then using 23 independent data from national forest inventories across Europe we tested whether coloniza- 24 tion and extinction probabilities are related to occurrence probability estimated by the SDMs. 25 Finally, we tested how colonization and extinction respectively drive probability of presence at 26 the metapopulation equilibrium. - Results: We found that for most species at least one pro- 27 cess (colonization/extinction) is related to the occurrence probability, but rarely both. - Main 28 conclusions: Our study supports the view that metapopulation dynamics are partly related 29 to SDM occurrence probability through one of the metapopulation probabilities. However these 30 links are relatively weak and the metapopulation models tend to overestimate the occurrence 31 probability. Our results call for caution in model extrapolating SDM models to metapopulation 32 dynamics. 33 1 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license under a certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not this version posted July 8, 2020. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/748483 doi: bioRxiv preprint