cover_letter_geb_revision_apr_2015.txt

Dear Dr. Currie,

Thank you for the opportunity to submit a revised version of our manuscript, "Cross-scale integration of knowledge for predicting species ranges: a metamodeling framework." We have made substantial revisions to the manuscript to address your concerns. Specifically, we have reduced the length of the manuscript to approximately 4600 words. We have also improved the empirical portion of the manuscript by adding a model evaluation. Our original version dealt only with projecting the range of the species into the future, making evaluation impossible (due to a lack of future data). We have retained this aspect, as it is a major strength of our method, but we have also applied the method to predicting the current range of a species. We use standard techniques to evaluate this method (area under the receiver operating curve), and we emphasize the value of transparent understanding of uncertainty that our method provides.

Thank you for your consideration of our manuscript. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Matthew V. Talluto,
Isabelle Boulangeat,
Dominique Gravel
Departament du Biologie
Universitee du Quebec a Rimouski